Political Economy and Colonial Ireland: The Propagation and

Transcription

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND
COLONIAL IRELAND
POLITICAL ECONOMY
AND COLONIAL
IRELAND
The propagation and ideological
function of economic discourse
in the nineteenth century
Thomas A.Boylan
and
Timothy P.Foley
London and New York
First published 1992
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1992 Thomas A.Boylan and Timothy P.Foley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Boylan, Thomas A.
Political economy and colonial Ireland: the propagation
and ideological function of economic discourse in the
nineteenth century.
1. Ireland. Economics. Related to politics. History
I. Title II. Foley, Timothy P.
330. 941509034
ISBN 0-203-98129-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-06628-X (Print Edition)
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Boylan, Thomas A.
Political economy and colonial Ireland: the propagation
and ideological function of economic discourse in the
nineteenth century
Thomas A.Boylan and Timothy P.Foley
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-06628-X
1. Economics—Ireland—History—19th century.
2. Economics—Study and teaching (Higher)—Ireland—
History—19th century.
I. Foley, Timothy P., II. Title.
HB104.B69 1992
330'. 09415' 09034–dc20
To
Noeleen and Molly
‘I believe that, next to good Religious Education, a sound
Knowledge of Political Economy would tend as much to
tranquillize this Country, if not more, than any other Branch of
Knowledge that can be taught in Schools.’
(Hugh Hamill, Schools’ Inspector, Cork, 1833)
‘[Political economy was] the only means which existed of
rescuing the country from convulsion.’
(Richard Whately, 1848)
‘Political Economy is…a science at the same time dangerous
and leading to occasions of sin.’
(John Henry Newman, 1852)
‘Modern Anglicanism, i.e., Utilitarianism, the creed of Russell
and Peel as well as of the Radicals, this thing, call it Yankeeism
or Englishism, which measure prosperity by exchangeable
value, measures duty by gain, and limits desire to clothes, food,
and respectability; this damned thing has come into Ireland
under the Whigs, and is equally the favourite of the Peel
Tories. It is believed in the political assemblies in our cities,
preached from our pulpits (always Utilitarian or persecuting); it
is the very apostles’ creed of the professions, and threatens to
corrupt the lower classes, who are still faithful and romantic.
To use every literary and political engine against this seems to
me the first duty of an Irish patriot who can forsee
consequences. Believe me, this is a greater though no so
obvious danger as Papal supremacy.’
(Thomas Davis, 1840s)
CONTENTS
Preface
vii
Acknowledgements
ix
1
POLITICAL ECONOMY: ‘A SCIENCE UNKNOWN
IN IRELAND’
1
2
THE WHATELY CHAIR OF POLITICAL
ECONOMY AT TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN,
1832–1900
17
3
POLITICAL ECONOMY AT THE QUEEN’S
COLLEGES IN IRELAND (BELFAST, CORK,
GALWAY), 1845–1900
43
4
EASY LESSONS ON MONEY MATTERS: POLITICAL
ECONOMY IN THE NATIONAL SCHOOLS
65
5
‘TO THE POOR THE GOSPEL ITS PREACHED’:
THE DUBLIN STATISTICAL SOCIETY AND THE
BARRINGTON LECTURES
97
6
‘NEXT TO GODLINESS’: POLITICAL ECONOMY,
IRELAND, AND IDEOLOGY
113
APPENDIX: BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS OF
PROFESSORS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AT
TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN AND THE QUEEN’S
COLLEGES (BELFAST, CORK, GALWAY) IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
157
Notes and references
171
Index
201
PREFACE
This book developed from our ongoing study of Irish political
economy, especially of the contributions of John Elliot Cairnes, and
our involvement in the international research project ‘The
Institutionalization of Political Economy: Its Introduction and
Acceptance into European, North American and Japanese
Universities’. Versions of chapters two and three will be included in
the forthcoming volume for Great Britain and Ireland, edited by
Istvan Hont and Keith Tribe, entitled Trade, Politics, and Letters:
The Rise of Economics in British University Culture, 1755–1905, and
published by Routledge. We decided to attempt a comprehensive
coverage of the propagation of political economy in Ireland at
popular as well as at university level. With the exception of the
pioneering work of Professor R.D.Collison Black on political
economy at Trinity College Dublin and on the Dublin Statistical
Society (later to become the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland), not only is the field untilled, the very territory is uncharted.
This is especially true of what is perhaps the most intriguing area of
all, the teaching of political economy to children in the national
schools in Ireland in the nineteenth century. As political economy
was especially aimed at the lower classes we have addressed the
activities of the Statistical Society, in particular its administration of
the Barrington Lectures. Central to our study is the role of Richard
Whately, Anglican Archbishop of Dublin (1831–63) and former
Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford. He founded the
Whately Chair at Trinity, he was instrumental in establishing the
Statistical Society of which he was president, and, as a commissioner
of national education, he introduced political economy into the school
curriculum, as well as writing the textbook Easy Lessons on Money
Matters. Whately was the great evangelist of political economy in
nineteenth-century Ireland.
viii
There was a widespread view that political economy was both
little known and little respected in Ireland. Indeed this was seen as yet
another explanation for Irish economic backwardness. We argue that
in an Ireland divided socially, economically, politically, and
denominationally, consensus was sought in the new discipline of
political economy, claiming to be scientifically impartial and to be an
incontrovertible form of knowledge which transcended all divisions.
But political economy was ideological, performing the crucial
function of defending the socio-economic status quo and, in the words
of a schools’ inspector in 1833, tranquillising the country. It was a
central part of the educational system, formal and informal, and a
powerful instrument of social control, achieved not through coercion,
but through the intellectual hegemony of a master science. The Great
Famine of the mid-1840s was a critical turning point in the reign of
political economy and its then inseparable companion, the doctrine
of laissez-faire. There were vitriolic popular attacks on the
discipline, both moral and nationalist. There was increased scepticism
concerning both the validity and universality of its laws, and even
calls to establish an Irish political economy. There was a concerted
attempt by the authorities to defend the honour of political economy,
but within a decade there was an increasing awareness that a political
economy generated out of English ideas and experiences was
unsuitable to Ireland. In the face of an unsparing moral critique, the
prestige of political economy faded, its absolutist reign over. Irish
resistance, especially to the doctrines of absolute private property in
land and the sacredness of contract, was such that various Irish Land
Acts had to, in effect, abandon them as the price to be paid for
tranquillity. Political economy’s mission of assimilating Ireland to
England failed; concomitant with its decline was an increased
emphasis on Ireland’s difference from England. Political economy
was unsuccessful as an instrument of empire, and Ireland was to be
governed by ‘Irish ideas’.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We have incurred many debts of gratitude over several years in our
reasearch for this book and a perfunctory mention here will scarcely
serve to discharge them. We want to thank the James Hardiman
Library, University College Galway (the Acting Librarian, Ms Pat
O’Connell, and especially Ms Maeve Doyle), the National Library of
Ireland, the Library of Trinity College Dublin, the British Library,
the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Marshall Library, Cambridge, and
the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. We are also
pleased to acknowledge the facilities afforded us by the Research
Centre, King’s College, Cambridge, the University of San Francisco,
and San José State University. We are particularly grateful to the
Development Fund in UCG, without whose financial support this
project would have been impossible. We are also grateful to the
Presidential Research Committee for financial services rendered and
to the Social Science Research Centre, also in UCG. Both of us wish
to express our gratitude for the Senior Fulbright Fellowships, which
eased our paths financially and academically. We also want to thank
the Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy for one of their
Exchange Fellowships.
We want especially to thank Professor R.D.Collison Black of
Queen’s University Belfast for his generosity, his encouragement,
and his scholarship. Dr Istvan Hont of King’s College, Cambridge has
been very supportive, as has Dr Keith Tribe of the University of
Keele. We are also grateful to Professor Dermot McAleese and Mr
Antoin Murphy of Trinity College Dublin, to Professor, and
Professor A.W.Coats of Duke University. Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh and
Michael Cuddy, Mr Alf MacLochlainn, and Mr P.J.Lawless of UCG,
and Professor James Walsh, Dean of the School of Social Sciences,
San José State University.
x
We salute Ciara Boylan, age 9, for her heroic services to
scholarship in reading Whately’s Easy Lessons on Money Matters
and finding it ‘dry’. John Boylan and Jane Foley have yet to manifest
an interest in political economy. Most of all we want to thank
Noeleen Boylan and Molly Fogarty.
Finally, we are immensely grateful to Imelda Howley and Claire
Noone for cheerfully and expertly typing a difficult manuscript.
1
POLITICAL ECONOMY:
‘A science unknown in Ireland’
It was widely believed that political economy was little known in
nineteenth-century Ireland and, if known, was not highly regarded.
There was also a widespread view that the laws of political economy,
thought universal in their application, somehow mysteriously
contrived not to apply to Ireland. In these circumstances it is not
surprising that John Kenneth Galbraith should declare that the Irish
had never produced economists of international standing.1 But
Ireland did produce distinguished economists and it is appropriate
that many (if not most) of these in the nineteenth century were critical,
in different ways, of prevailing orthodoxy. The early Whately
Professors in Trinity College Dublin, the so-called ‘Dublin School’,
have been described as ‘dissenters’, and the leading proponents of the
historical and comparative method in the English-speaking world
were Irish economists, Cliffe Leslie and John Kells Ingram.
Ignorance of and indifference or hostility towards the laws of political
economy were added to the already imposing catalogue of causes of
Irish economic backwardness. In this respect Ireland was a warning
example. In the words of Charles Francis Bastable, one of the most
celebrated Whately Professors, ‘so far from Political Economy being
inoperative in Ireland, no country has furnished more remarkable
instances of the action of economic forces, and of the danger of
disregarding precepts based on a knowledge of their working’.2
Among the upper orders of Irish society, from the 1830s onwards, the
cultivation of political economy, its widespread dissemination,
especially amongst the working classes and the strict application of
its principles to the economic life of the country, were seen as
absolutely vital to economic progress. This book attempts to describe
the production, distribution, and consumption of economic ideas in
nineteenth-century Ireland and to consider the ideological functions
of these ideas.
2 POLITICAL ECONOMY AND COLONIAL IRELAND
We wish to argue that in an economically, politically, and
denominationally divided Ireland, one crucial area where consensus
was sought was political economy, a discipline claiming scientific
impartiality. By the nineteenth century in Britain political economy
had become the unchallenged mode of political discourse, the selfknowledge of industrial society, though we argue that in largely
agricultural and colonial Ireland, its status was more problematic. In
Britain political economy, ‘secular’, ‘descriptive’, ‘scientific’,
‘ideologically neutral’, had superseded earlier moral, religious, and
generally prescriptive discursive modes. Because of denominational
division in Ireland, ideological consensus based on religion,
traditionally a very powerful agent of social cohesion, was
impossible, especially as such division, in large measure, coincided
with economic, social, and national differences. Richard Whately, the
Anglican Archbishop of Dublin and the central figure in the spread
of political economy in Ireland, like most other commentators, saw
political economy as second in importance only to religion (even in a
crucial sense more important) and as having, in large measure,
assumed the position vacated by religion as the great agent of social
control. But, we argue, political economy was partisan, prescriptive,
tendentious. Claiming to be non-sectarian and non-political, it
performed a vitally important ideological function for the political
and religious establishment in defending existing socio-economic
relations, including landlordism, property rights, and in attacking
trade unions.
Political economy was especially well qualified as a bonding
agency in society as it seemed to provide consensus both at the
discursive and at the ‘material’ economic levels. Interestingly, with
the eventual failure of the project, and after the fall of Parnell, which
ended many hopes of a political (seen as the quintessential arena of
division) solution to Irish problems, consensus was sought at the
‘material’ level of agricultural co-operation (the foundation of the
Irish Agricultural Organisation Society), ‘below’ the divisiveness of
politics, as it were, and at the cultural level, ‘above’ politics, in the
revival of the Irish language (the Gaelic League) and the Literary
Revival. In general, the early writings of the Whately Professors and
the members of the Dublin Statistical Society (later to become the
Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland) defended political
economy as a pure science, just like astronomy or mechanics, and were
somewhat embarrassed by the adjective ‘political’ in its title, and as a
consequence they advocated rigorous adherence to the ‘laws’ of
‘A SCIENCE UNKNOWN IN IRELAND’ 3
political economy, especially to the policy of laissez-faire. These laws
were held to be natural laws and hence universal. Indeed as James
A.Lawson, a former Whately Professor, put it in 1862, political
economy owed its very existence to the ‘misfortunes and calamities
caused by offending against the laws of nature’.3 In Britain, in the
latter part of the century, this absolutism gave way to relativism, a
state of affairs embraced by the new historical school but, in the end,
rejected by mainstream British economists who redoubled their
efforts to make political economy more scientific. This increased
‘scientificisation’, even mathematicisation of economic discourse,
culminated in a new name, economics, indicating that the discipline
had, at last, managed to rid itself of its ideological pre-history. But in
Ireland, we argue, the movement was, in important respects, in a
different direction with increased criticism of the scientific nature of
political economy, the universality of its laws, and (a not unrelated
matter) the validity of its methodologies. Richard Whately and
William Edward Hearn were so dissatisfied with the unscientific name
‘political economy’ that they coined substitutes, ‘catallactics’ and
‘plutology’, thus adding two new words to the English language. But
in Ireland, as the century progressed, there was increasing emphasis
on what Cliffe Leslie called ‘the imperious conditions of time and
place’, a growing scepticism concerning the universality of political
economy, and an increasing awareness that a political economy
generated out of English experience and ideas was not appropriate to
the very different socio-economic arrangements of Ireland. It was
hardly an accident that the leading advocates of the historical method,
Leslie and Ingram, came out of Ireland. An increasing emphasis on
the historical, the comparative and the institutional, combined with a
moral and even political critique seriously undermined the
universalist pretensions of orthodox political economy. Several of the
early speakers at the Dublin Statistical Society ridiculed John
Mitchel’s notion of ‘Irish political economy’, without condescending
to name him. The most notable of them, William Neilson Hancock,
was later to develop a not dissimilar critique of orthodox political
economy, down- grading its scientific character in the name of
morality. Indeed the ideas of Leslie and Ingram and the later views of
Cairnes were, perhaps, closer to Mitchel’s alleged oxymoron than
they would have admitted.
In this study of the dissemination and reception of political
economy in an institutional context special reference must be made to
the extraordinary role in the process played by Richard Whately,
Archbishop of Dublin from 1831 until his death in 1863, and
previously the Drummond Professor of Political Economy at the
University of Oxford. One of his first important actions on
appointment to Dublin was to establish and fund a Professorship of
Political Economy in Trinity College Dublin in 1832. He retained a
keen interest in the Professorship, whose incumbents were chosen, in
the Oxford fashion, by competitive examination, and who held office
for five years. In the same year he became one of the original
commissioners of national education and remained the de facto head,
and the most influential member, of the Board of National Education
for many years. In this capacity he introduced political economy to
the school curriculum for which he himself wrote the textbook, Easy
Lessons on Money Matters, easily the best-selling work in economics
in the nineteenth century. In 1847 the Dublin Statistical Society was
formed for the purpose of ‘promoting the study of Statistical and
Economical Science’. The Society’s genesis was closely connected
with Trinity College and especially with the Whately Professors of
Political Economy. Whately himself became the first president of the
Society, an office he held until his death. Indeed, according to a
subsequent president, Sir John Lentaigne, it was ‘mainly through his
influence and exertions’ that the Society was formed.4 In 1834 John
Barrington, a Dublin merchant, established a trust to fund lectures in
political economy, especially for workers, in various cities, towns,
and villages throughout Ireland. In 1849 the Statistical Society took
over the administration of these lectures, an arrangement which
endures to this day. At one period the Barrington Fund was used to
train schoolmasters in political economy, a further example of how
interconnected were the various bodies involved in the promulgation
of the subject.
Whately was by far the most influential propagator of political
economy in nineteenth-century Ireland, a task he pursued with
evangelical zeal. Before he established the chair at Trinity College,
several others, such as Thomas Prior, Samuel Madden, and Robert
Burrowes had advocated that political economy (or ‘trade’) be taught
there. But the formal teaching of economics in Ireland dates from the
establishment of the Whately chair in 1832 and Whately is seen,
quite rightly, as the discipline’s founding (and indeed funding)
father. Lawson, the third holder of the chair, first used the phrase
‘father of economic science in Ireland’ with reference to Whately in
his address delivered at the opening of the eleventh session of the
Statistical Society in 1858 and he repeated it on a number of
occasions.5 Hancock, Lawson’s immediate successor in the Whately
chair, wrote in 1847 that Whately ‘first introduced the study of
Political Economy into this University [Dublin], indeed, I may say,
into Ireland’,6 When the president died in 1863 Hancock, in his
address to the Statistical Society, said that
In Dublin, as in Oxford, Archbishop Whately sought to remove
prejudice, and to lend the weight of his character and position
to the study and teaching of political economy. Besides the
lectures in the University, Archbishop Whately attached the
greatest importance to the diffusion of the knowledge of the
science amongst the poor, and his Easy Lessons on Money
Matters, so widely circulated and taught, were well calculated
to attain this result.7
According to Sir Robert Kane, President of Queen’s College Cork,
Whately had
by his salutary influence on the courses of the National Schools,
and by his munificent endowment of the professor-ship in
Trinity College, secured that means should be afforded of
teaching political economy to all classes of society; and in his
capacity as Senator of the National University, founded by our
beloved Queen, our president has effectually co-operated to
introduce, as a portion of undergraduate education the principles
of political economy, of jurisprudence, and of statistics, for
teaching which professorships have been founded in the
Queen’s Colleges.8
In his presidential address to the Statistical Society in 1877 Lentaigne
stated that the Society came into existence as a result of his
‘influence and exertions’ and that he never ceased ‘by every means in
his power’ to provide the ‘knowledge of Social Science, which he
considered so important for the well-being of society’.9 Richard
Horner Mills, the first Professor of Jurisprudence and Political
Economy in Queen’s College Cork, dedicated his book, The
Principles of Currency and Banking, to Whately ‘whose Liberality
and Public Spirit Introduced the Study of Political Economy into
Ireland’.10 According to the Dublin merchant Jonathan Pim, the
‘enlightened liberality’ of Whately in funding the Trinity chair ‘gave
the first impulse to the study of economic questions in this
country’.11 Indeed, such was Whately’s commitment to the
propagation of political economy that instead of a monument to his
memory, it was deemed more appropriate, both to the spirit of the
man and the age, that ‘a permanent endowment for promoting the
study of political economy in the University of Dublin’ be
established.12
Writing to Gladstone in 1869, John Bright declared: ‘I have great
faith in political economy, a science unknown, I suspect, in
Ireland.’13 But in the admittedly partisan view of Whately (and
indeed others) much progress had been achieved since 1832 in
combating economic ignorance in Ireland. In his presidential address
at the condusion of the first session of the Statistical Society in 1848,
Whately praised the increased attention which was being devoted to
political economy, asking rhetorically ‘for who, twenty years ago,
would have thought that such an assemblage of scientific men could
be collected for the purpose of promoting the cultivation of Political
Economy’? He noted modestly that before the establishment of the
Professorship ‘very few thought at all of the subject, and the few who
did think of it entertained fallacious and erroneous notions relative to
it’.14 Even the learned scholars of Trinity College were ignorant of
the subject for, according to Whately, ‘not one of the academic heads
absolutely knew what the term Political Economy meant’.15 Even the
founding of a chair was ‘an enterprise attended with considerable
difficulty, owing to the general ignorance of the subject in the
University’.16 Such was the paucity of economic knowledge that
Whately almost despaired of finding a suitable occupant for the
chair.17
By 1851 Sir Robert Kane felt that in Ireland, ‘where the neglect of
economic principles’ had been the cause of ‘so much individual
suffering, and of so much national loss’, the ‘period of social
ignorance and economic error’ had ‘nearly passed away’.18
According to Lawson, at the time of the establishment of the Whately
chair, ‘the very name of political economy was unknown in Ireland. I
recollect myself that when it was spoken of even educated men used
to ask what it meant.’19 Concerning political economy, according to
Lawson, the founders of the Statistical Society felt that ‘we have
suffered much from our neglect and ignorance of its ordinary
principles’.20 Writing in 1861 Whately’s friend, the eminent
economist Nassau Senior, felt that the Irish were still the ‘tools of their
priests’ and that the priests were ‘still ignorant of the economical
laws on which the welfare of the labouring classes depends’.21 A few
years later, Thomas O’Hagan, praising the work of the Statistical
Society, remarked again on Irish backwardness in economic
knowledge:
Economic science, and the inquiries ancillary to the
establishment of its principles and their judicious application to
the affairs of human life, have only for a very brief period
commanded any attention amongst us. They constitute, indeed,
almost a new department of knowledge, which has found its
special cultivation elsewhere in latter years, but, with
ourselves, that cultivation was very long delayed.22
As late as 1866 a review of Arthur Houston’s book, The Principles of
Values in Exchange, in the Irish Industrial Magazine stated that
‘political economy is a subject little cared for in Ireland’.23
According to his daughter, Richard Whately did much to rescue
political economy from the ‘undue prejudices with which it was
generally regarded’.24 It was felt that while most people were simply
ignorant of political economy, very many others disregarded its
teachings and were prejudiced or hostile towards it. The first Whately
Professor, Mountifort Longfield, like several of his successors, felt
called upon to defend the honour of his discipline. He devoted the
first few pages of his Four Lectures on Poor Laws to answering ‘an
invective against Political-Economy’.25 A letter to the editor of the
Dublin University Magazine claimed that Longfield’s book was ‘well
calculated to remove the apathy and the prejudices which have
hitherto existed in reference to this science, among those classes of
our countrymen to whom a knowledge of its principles…[was of]
paramount national importance’.26 Isaac Butt, Longfield’s immediate
successor, spoke frequently of ‘popular prejudice’ and a ‘popular
hostility’ towards political economy, but he believed it was in the
decline.27 Writing in 1851, James Haughton described political
economy as being ‘attacked unsparingly by a numerous class of
reasoners, who find it easier to account for the evils which exist
around them on irrational principles, hastily adopted’.28 There was,
as we shall see in chapter six, more reasoned opposition to orthodox
political economy in Ireland in the nineteenth century, which saw it as
‘immoral’, or as opposed to the interests of, for instance, workers,
tenants, and even the cause of Irish nationality.
The critique of political economy, especially the doctrine of
laissez-faire which was seen as inseparable from it, reached a climax
in 1847, the year of the Great Famine in Ireland. In that year the Irish
Confederation published a booklet, edited by John Mitchel,
consisting of extracts from Swift and Berkeley, and significantly
entitled Irish Political Economy. Mitchel starkly contrasted ‘Irish’
political economy with what he witheringly called ‘English’ or
‘Famine’ political economy. He wrote that
English Professors of political economy have, by perverting
and misapplying the principles of that science, endeavoured to
prove to us, that to part with our bread and cattle is profitable
‘commerce’ and that our trading intercourse with their country
enriches us immensely whatever the ignorant and starving Irish
may say and feel to the contrary.29
But many authors, some neither nationalist nor Irish, were in
agreement with Mitchel’s views. In general, the objections were not
to political economy as such but to a political economy which
preached laissez-faire, the absolute nature of property (especially in
land), and the sanctity of contract. There was a general opinion that
these principles were suitable to an advanced industrial society such
as England but not to an economically and socially backward
agricultural one like Ireland. In other words, political economy had a
nationality. It was English and it was not appropriate to Irish
circumstances. In 1847, the Revd George H.Stoddart, the Secretary
of the United Relief Association, wrote that it was
perfect folly to be dancing a Will-o’-the-wisp dance after the
abstract principles of political economy, as laid down by Adam
Smith, for it ought to be remembered, that he wrote for a
country advanced in social position and high civilization.30
In his Coercion in Ireland, Samuel Laing wrote that the ‘absolute
rights of property and the sacredness of contract’ though
sound principles in England, had brought ‘unmixed evil’ to a poor
agricultural country like Ireland.31 In 1888 ‘An Irish Liberal’, looking
back on the Great Famine, wrote that ‘Government interference, it
was argued, would prejudice private enterprise. The laws of political
economy, and the doctrine of laissez-faire were equal to all
emergencies’. The author added dryly, ‘we know what happened’.32
And, finally, in the early years of this century, Alice Stopford Greene
declared baldly that ‘Englishmen could not understand Irish
conditions. The political economy they advocated for their own
country had no relation to Ireland.’33
As might be expected, political economists rushed to the defence of
the scientificity of their subject and the universality of its laws.
Hancock was obviously referring to Mitchel when he wrote that the
‘idea of having a science of exchanges peculiar to Ireland, under the
name of Irish Political Economy, is about as reasonable as proposing
to have Irish mechanics, Irish mathematics, or Irish astronomy’,34
Hancock had published a book the previous year which he
dramatically entitled Three Lectures on the Question: Should the
Principles of Political Economy Be Disregarded at the Present
Crisis? The answer was an unequivocal ‘no’. In fact, reading the
early contributions to the Transactions and Journal of the Statistical
Society, it becomes obvious that the Society was founded, not so
much as a humanitarian response to the Great Famine, though it
would be unfair to deny the presence of such an impulse, but in order
to defend the laws of political economy then seen as under
unprecedented attack.
Longfield attacked the allegation ‘that although Political Economy
might be a very good thing in other countries, it was not suited to
Ireland’.35 The views being combated by Longfield were that in a
country so exceptionally circumstanced as Ireland (especially in time
of famine) the laws of political economy should either be completely
disregarded or else there should be a relaxation in their application.
In 1854 Jonathan Pim claimed that such was the success of the
Statistical Society in the seven years of its existence that ‘we are no
longer told that the rules of political economy may be very good, but
that it will not do to enforce them rigidly under all circumstances; that
they may do very well for a prosperous country but that in Ireland it
is quite another affair’.36 According to Lawson the Famine in Ireland
was a time when people said:
this is no period for the application of the principles of political
economy; political economy may do for ordinary occasions, in
time of peace, in times when no great national disaster had
fallen upon the people; we are now in a particular crisis—the
case is an extraordinary one, and therefore ordinary remedies
and doctrines ought to be flung to the winds.37
In 1866 John Joseph Murphy wrote that ‘Ireland is, no doubt a poorer
country than Great Britain; but to relax the application of the
principles of political economy in the case of a poor country, would
be as reasonable as to relax the application of medical science in the
case of a patient of weak constitution’,38 But the victory of the
political economists was far from complete. The general view
seemed to remain that, in the words of the Limerick Declaration of
1868 (a repeal of the Union manifesto by an assembly of Roman
Catholic priests), ‘Ireland has had enough of political economy’.39
TWO years later Cairnes could uncontroversially claim that all
schemes offered for the settlement of the Irish land question had in
common ‘a profound distrust of Political Economy…. It is either
sneered at as unpractical and perverse, or its authority is respectfully
put aside as of no account in a country so exceptionally situated as
Ireland’.40 Four years later R.E.Thompson stated that Gladstone and
Robert Lowe ‘hold fast to every letter of the old shibboleth, except
when it comes to legislation about Ireland. The laws of economy
which govern the rest of the world are not in force on the western
shore of St George’s Channel.41 As late as 1884, Bastable felt called
upon to reject the ‘widely-diffused idea that economic principles are
not applicable to Ireland’, the idea that ‘although Political Economy
might be a very good thing in other countries, it was not suited to
Ireland’. As we have already noted, Bastable concluded that ‘so far
from Political Economy being inoperative in Ireland, no country has
furnished more remarkable instances of the action of economic
forces, and of the danger of disregarding precepts based on a
knowledge of their working’.42
Attacks on political economy became more virulent in 1847 in
response to the Great Famine and in the revolutionary year of 1848.
There were demands to ignore the laws of political economy, to relax
their rigorous application, and even to construct an Irish political
economy. In 1832 the Whately chair was set up to minister to the
educated classes. An anonymous review of Longfield’s Lectures in
the Dublin University Magazine in 1834 stated that a knowledge of
the principles of political economy was of ‘paramount national
importance’ for ‘all men of a certain standing in society’, by which
the author meant the Irish landed gentry.43 But that very year John
Barrington set up his trust fund, for the teaching of political economy
to the lower classes. Soon afterwards national teachers were being
instructed in the subject and they, in turn, taught it to the children of
the poor in Ireland. But with the events of 1847 and 1848 a new
sense of urgency, even of panic, was evident. The Statistical Society,
founded in 1847, propagated economic ideas to a largely middle-
class audience but, by accepting the administration of the Barrington
Trust in 1849, the Society earnestly hoped to reach the most
disaffected (and so important) audience of all, the working classes.
There is also some evidence to show that political economy became,
at this time, a much more important part of the national school
curriculum than had been the case.
Whately believed passionately in the need to promulgate political
economy widely, but especially among the lower orders. The science
would be of no real benefit if merely cultivated by ‘five or six men of
taste and science’ and the ‘very best theories were but useless until
made practical and public’. It had to be ‘diffused generally amongst
the people, to whom the acquirement of it was of the deepest
importance’.44 In 1833 Whately, writing to a Miss Crabtree (a former
parishioner of his), claimed that ‘perhaps the sort of thing most
wanted now for children and the poor, is some plain instructions in
Political Economy’. He wanted Miss Crabtree to ‘work up some such
instruction into familiar tales and dialogues’ after the fashion of
Harriet Martineau.45 By 1854 Jonathan Pim felt that not only was the
importance of political economy admitted but that ‘instead of being
treated as an abstract science, and confined to a few learned
professors’, it was now ‘widely diffused’ and was, in fact, a ‘popular
science’.46 James Lawson was almost equally sanguine: the
popularity of ‘social science’ was a modern phenomenon, for it was
previously unknown ‘save to a few studious men in the closet’.47
It is unnecessary to catalogue in any great detail the numerous
statements from within the educational system on the vital
importance of a knowledge of political economy to the people of
Ireland and especially to the lower classes. William McCreedy,
a head inspector of national schools, reported in 1848 that the topics
of political economy were ‘all matters of the deepest interest, upon
which it is most desirable all men should entertain correct views’.48
The following year he wrote that an acquaintence with the subject
was ‘important’ and even ‘necessary’ to all classes of society.49 His
colleague James Patten regretted in his report for 1848 that the
answering by the teachers in political economy was not up to his
expectation despite the ‘great prominence’ he had given the matter
and the ‘importance’ he attached to it.50 In 1853 J.Macdonnell of
Larne Model School spoke in even stronger terms:
The deplorable results that frequently arise from ignorance of
the simplest principles of this science make it a matter of the
deepest importance to have the rising generation carefully
instructed in these principles. It has always formed a part of the
education of boys here, but more especially during the past
year have I felt myself called on to devote more than ordinary
attention to it.51
In 1879 J.Moylan (presumably the schoolmaster of Limerick Model
School who was appointed a Barrington lecturer in 1873–4) declared
his keen disappointment to find political economy ‘wholly excluded’
from the Intermediate Education programme. ‘But certain it is’, he
wrote,
that political economy is not getting anything like the amount
of public attention commensurate from its importance as a
means of correcting popular errors, or as an interesting subject
of the curriculum of intermediate or elementary education; so
that at the snail’s pace at which we are progressing in this
regard, it will, I fear, be a long time till political economy will
have fulfilled its mission of making popular and rendering
irrefutable the simple proposition that the ‘wealth of mankind is
the abundance of things’.52
Needless to mention, the members of the Statistical Society were
absolutely convinced of the importance of political economy,
especially in Ireland. ‘To our own country’, wrote Sir Robert Kane,
‘the proper appreciation of the dignity and utility of political
economy is of paramount importance, and it is most fortunate that in
no country are in action more extended or more effectual agencies
for diffusing economical information’.53 Similar ideas were carried to
many towns and villages of Ireland by the new Barrington lecturers,
prominent among whom were Professors from the recently founded
Queen’s Colleges. From Galway, for instance, lectures were being
given in various parts of the country by not only the Professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy (Denis Caulfield Heron) but
also by the Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Thomas W.Moffett)
and the Professor of Greek (W.E.Hearn). Not only did the Galway
papers carry extensive reports of lectures delivered to Galway
audiences (often the full texts) but they usually reprinted the accounts
in local papers of lectures delivered by Galway Professors at other
venues. To take one example, long extracts from lectures delivered
by Moffett in such places as Armagh, Ardee, Coleraine, Holywood,
Lisburn, and Garvagh were reproduced in the Galway Vindicator. An
extraordinary amount of space was devoted in these local papers, in
the late 1840s and early 1850s, to political economy, and both
lecturers and newspapers constantly reiterated the crucial
importance, especially at that time, of the subject. Moffett’s first
lecture at the Galway Mechanics’ Institute set out to deal with, inter
alia, the ‘Importance of the Science at the present time’.54 With
reference to this lecture the Galway Vindicator reported that Moffett
‘insisted on the paramount importance of the diffusion of sound views’
on political economy ‘to the community at large, especially at the
present time’.55 Referring to the same lecture the Galway Mercury
wrote that ‘Political Economy has now become a science of
paramount importance. Its principles should be, to some extent, at
least, studied by every individual in society’.56 On receiving an
illustrated address from the committee of the Mechanics’ Institute at
the conclusion of the final lecture in the series, Moffett reiterated that
the ‘existing circumstances of the country’ had ‘invested with vital
importance’ the subject of political economy.57
The closing years of the 1840s, when popular criticism of political
economy was at its most intense, also saw the beginning of a
powerful official defence of the discipline. Whately himself entered
the fray, his Professors at Trinity descended from their chairs to more
popular forums, the Statistical Society was founded and sought to
influence people through lectures and publications, the Professors in
the newly established Queen’s Colleges in Belfast, Cork, and Galway
began to spread the good news, the Barrington Lectures under the
aegis of the Statistical Society became highly successful, and
increased emphasis was placed on the teaching of political economy
in the national schools. In his address at the conclusion of the first
session of the Statistical Society in June 1848, Whately was
impressed by the increased interest paid to political economy. For
who, he asked, ‘twenty years ago, would have thought that such an
assembly of scientific men could be collected for the purpose of
promoting the cultivation of Political Economy? He stressed the
importance of the Professors in the cultivation and diffusion of the
subject and in creating ‘a taste for the study of it’; it was to them the
Statistical Society ‘owed much of its success’.58 By 1851 Kane felt
that the era of Irish economic ignorance was over. No other country,
he said, had ‘more extended or more effectual agencies for diffusing
economical information’, thanks in large measure to Whately. Kane
also remarked that the reception accorded the Barrington lecturers
throughout Ireland afforded ‘most gratifying proof of the desire for
economic knowledge’.59 Looking back on the first seven years of the
operation of the Statistical Society, Jonathan Pim said that there had
been a remarkable alteration in the public attitude towards political
economy. Its importance was now admitted, ‘now every one is a
political economist’.60
Perhaps the most optimistic and even lyrical of all commentators
on the success of political economy was James A. Lawson.
Addressing the Statistical Society in 1858, he congratulated Whately,
whom he had called the ‘father of economic science in Ireland’, for
having a ‘very numerous family’.61 Four years later he wrote that the
study of the subject was introduced by the setting up of the Whately
chair and it was to it was owed the ‘existence of a school of
economists now so numerous in this country’.62 It was also, for
Lawson, a matter of ‘pride and satisfaction’ that the ‘two best textbooks on the subject of Banking and Currency’ were Irish books
written by Irish Professors.63 The Statistical Society and the
Barrington lecturers had continued to spread economic knowledge
throughout Ireland, ‘sowing the seeds of knowledge broadcast over
all the land’.64 In its first ten years, the Statistical Society had been
extraordinarily successful, in Lawson’s view, in its essential task, the
‘diffusion of a sound knowledge of political and social science’.65
Writing in 1858, he maintained that:
at the present moment there is no country in which political
quackery or economic or social fallacies would be less likely to
pass current than in Ireland; a state of things which stands
broadly in contrast with the condition of the country twentyfive years ago.66
At the time of the foundation of the Statistical Society the public
mind was ‘quite unsound’ on economic questions and the ‘principles
of free-trade had not been established’.67 In the ten years of the
Society, Lawson wrote, in a passage worth quoting at length,
We have in some degree contributed to produce in this
metropolis and through those parts of Ireland to which our
labours extended, something like a sound public opinion upon
economic and social questions. We have supplied the
wholesome food of rational discussion, instead of the
unwholesome diet of party politics, which up to that time was
perhaps the most acceptable thing that could be presented. And
we have now many of the people well instructed in those
truths. I venture to say if a socialist came into the country and
propounded any of his levelling doctrines, that there is hardly a
child in the national schools that would not establish the fallacy
of those doctrines; or if any man preached an inconvertible
paper currency or a project for land banks, there is not a town
in which our lectures have been delivered that would not
furnish persons able to show that such views were contrary to
the sound principles of social science.68
In his presidential address to the Statistical Society in 1877,
Lantaigne drew attention to the importance of the role played by
Whately’s Easy Lessons on Money Matters in disseminating political
economy among schoolchildren. These lesson books were ‘now in
the hands of more than one million readers in Ireland, children on the
rolls of schools under the Board’ and were read by ‘countless
numbers throughout the British colonies and the continent of
America’.69 Finally, writing in 1878, when the fortunes of political
economy had gone into decline, Hancock stated that the ‘systematic
teaching of economic science in Trinity College, in each of the
Queen’s Colleges, in the National Schools, and under the Barrington
Lecture Trust, had produced a state of opinion highly favourable to
progressive study of economic science’.70
Political economy in the 1870s in Britain, in the words of
Professor A.W.Coats, ‘suffered a considerable loss of public
prestige’.71 It was suggested with reference to the dinner given by the
Political Economy Club of London to mark the centenary of the
publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776, that the
assembled economists ‘had better be celebrating the obsequies of
their science than its jubilee’.72 To make matters worse, in the
following year, 1877, Francis Galton, the founder of the perhaps not
excessively scientific discipline of eugenics, proposed that Section F
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, dealing
with Political Economy and Statistics, be discontinued as the subject
lacked scientific status. In 1878 the Irish economist John Kells
Ingram defended the scientific credentials of political economy,
while admitting the existence of widespread scepticism on the
question.73 AS we have already noted, in 1879 Moylan greatly
regretted the public decline in interest in political economy.74 The
same year Samuel Haughton wrote a brief article entitled ‘Causes of
slow progress of political economy’. He ascribed the decline in
standing of the subject to the excessive claims made on its behalf by
its proponents, giving it a pre-eminent position of control over human
affairs, usurping all social, political, and artistic values. These writers
asserted that ‘this science of mere wealth was to be the master, not
the servant of man’.75
2
THE WHATELY CHAIR OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY AT TRINITY
COLEGE DUBLIN 1832–1900
The establishment of the Whately Chair of Political Economy at
Trinity College Dublin in 1832 represented the first step in the
formal institutionalisation of political economy in Ireland. That this
process should have commenced at Trinity College was largely
inevitable, since this was the only university institution in the country
at this time, though in a deeply-divided society it was not a
representative body. These social divisions were the result of a
sustained policy of colonisation, begun in the twelfth century, but
pursued more thoroughly and systematically during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. To comprehend the divisions of Irish society
resulting from colonisation and the place of Trinity College Dublin
within this society, which has been termed ‘the first colonial
university institution’,1 some attention must be devoted to the
historical background. The historical context is of particular
significance if the influences which determined the intellectual
functions of political economy and the reception afforded to it in a
colonial context are to be adequately understood. In this chapter we
examine the history of the Whately Chair at Trinity College, in its
wider societal context, from its foundation in 1832 to the turn of the
century. A number of aspects of this history will be treated in some
detail: a brief historical account of Trinity College within the larger
framework of Irish society, the establishment of the Whately Chair
and the teaching of political economy from the 1830s to 1900
approximately, and the contribution of the Whately Professors to the
emerging science of political economy. We conclude the chapter with
an account, albeit brief, of the formative influences on political
economy at Trinity College during the course of the nineteenth
century.
Despite numerous attempts to establish a university at Dublin
during the medieval period, these efforts were not attended by any
lasting success. While a university institution was established at St
Patrick’s Cathedral, which received a measure of support from the
crown in 1358, by the end of the fifteenth century it was in effective
decay, as was a similar institution established by the Irish Parliament
at Drogheda.2 If such an institution were to be successfully
established, a substantial endowment from the government or
powerful private patrons would be required.
In the event, and consequent to the act which established the
diocesan schools in 1559, government plans for university education
quickly followed. Originally it was planned to review the institution
attached to St Patrick’s, but this encountered considerable opposition
from the cathedral chapter. After protracted consultations, and partly
as a result of the fact that the corporation of the city of Dublin offered
an alternative site to locate the new university, a royal charter for the
establishment of the University of Dublin was received in 1592.3 The
charter described it as mater universitatis,4 and this was generally
interpreted to mean that a number of constituent colleges within the
University of Dublin would be established, along the lines of Oxford
and Cambridge. Notwithstanding this interpretation, Trinity College
was from the outset invested with the powers of a university. A
charter in 1613, which provided it with representation in the Irish
Parliament, declared that ‘the said college was, and was esteemed, a
university, and possessed all and singular the rights, liberties, and
immunities pertaining to a university’.5 Shortly after this instruction
from James I to the Lord Deputy, regarding ‘the settling of a
university as well as of the college near Dublin’, reference was made
to a scheme ‘wherein certain bounds may be set of an university
which may contain within them such places as have, or in probability
may have, learned men in them’.6 This scheme was the first of a
number of projects for adding new colleges to the University of
Dublin, none of which was implemented. As a result the University of
Dublin and Trinity College remained a single entity, though in theory
a distinction between them could be drawn. This distinction between
the university and college was a central consideration during the
debate on the Irish university question in the nineteenth century.
Nevertheless the charter as drawn up presented a number of
difficulties. In the first place the implications of the
designation mater universitatis were not clarified within the charter.
As interpreted later in the nineteenth century the term was taken to
imply that a federal university with a number of collegiate
institutions, along the lines of Oxford and Cambridge, was the
TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, 1832–1900 19
intended structure for the new university. There were certainly close
affinities with the older English universities, as reflected in the fact
that the constitution of the new college in Dublin was based on that
of Trinity College, Cambridge, and that the first three provosts in
Dublin were graduates of Cambridge.7 While the extension of the
University of Dublin into a multi-collegiate institution would have
provided Irish students with the same facilities as their counterparts
in England, the political instability in Ireland during the course of the
troubled seventeenth century, coupled with the lack of material
resources, acted as major inhibiting factors to such developments.
Atkinson has argued that
[the] real significance of the foundation at Trinity College is
that it was the first colonial university institution, equipped to
carry out the functions of both a college and a university, and
as such the prototype of Harvard (1639), Yale (1701),
Columbia (1734) and other institutions overseas.8
Second, the foundation of the college was the direct result of
government policy. Writing in 1606, Chichester the Lord Deputy,
stated that the crown should make every effort to encourage the Irish
upper classes to send their sons there, so that they could be ‘brought
up at the college near Dublin in English habit and religion’.9 From
the outset, Trinity College was clearly perceived as an instrument to
implement an official Anglican policy, a role not required of the
comparable institutions in England. Finally, the original charter did
not provide an adequate endowment for the new institution. The
annuity, amounting to £100 in value, which the Lord Deputy
succeeded in extracting from Elizabeth I, proved hopelessly
inadequate, and in 1598 the provost was forced to go to England and
to plead the cause of the college. The reign of James I proved to be
more benign in terms of official endowment; in addition to large grants
in the plantation of Ulster, the college received an increased annuity
amounting to £388 from the Irish exchequer. But even this proved
insufficient, and were it not for the contributions of private
benefactors the college would have experienced serious difficulties.10
In its early curriculum Trinity reflected a trend towards intellectual
and even social radicalism, but by the end of the seventeenth century
it had become the central educational institution of the Anglo-Irish,
particularly of the gentleman farmer and Church of Ireland cleric,
and the intellectual buttress of the social, religious and political
values of this ruling elite.11 During the course of the eighteenth
century, however, a number of initiatives were taken which
facilitated the introduction of new areas of learning. In 1724 a chair
of natural and experimental philosophy was established; this was
followed in 1762 by chairs of mathematics and oriental languages, in
1776 by two royal chairs of modern languages, and in 1785 by chairs
of chemistry and botany, while in 1791 a chair of Irish was
established. The establishment of these chairs did not ensure the
active development of these subjects in all cases, but in comparison
with the older English universities the pursuit of contemporary
studies and an emphasis on modern authors was pronounced. One
commentator writing in 1759 stated that ‘the Newtonian Philosophy,
the excellent Mr Boyle’s philosophy, Mr Locke’s metaphysics
prevail much in the College of Dublin’.12
The formal administrative structure of the University of Dublin
consisted of the chancellor, vice-chancellor, and the senate, whose
principal function was, and remains, the conferring of degrees. In
addition there was the council, a body which represented the board,
fellows, professors and the senate. In practice the government of the
college and university lay in the hands of the board in association
with the visitors. This latter group consisted of the vice-chancellor,
and the Archbishop of Dublin, ex officio. Under the charter they
formed the final court of appeal and were required to conduct
visitations every three years. In 1811 annual visitations were
established, an arrangement which lasted until 1833, when it was
abandoned and the visitors were released from any formal
obligations to visit at stated intervals.13
The board was the centre of power in the institution, and within it
was concentrated all judicial, executive, and legislative functions. It
appointed to all academic posts, with the exception of the
provostship, which was reserved for the crown. It controlled all the
finances of the college and university, and appointed all the major
executive officers, the vice-provost, librarian, registrar, senior
lecturer, and bursar. As a judicial body it was subordinate only to the
visitors as a court of appeal.14 The position of the Archbishop of
Dublin as a visitor was clearly one of prestige and influence, which
doubtless greatly facilitated Whately’s dealings with the college.
To locate Trinity College within the wider Irish society its place
within the religious and educational spheres must be outlined. Trinity
College Dublin was founded ‘for the education…of youths…that
they may be the better assisted in the study of the liberal arts and in
the cultivation of virtue and religion’,15 The religion in question was
that of the Anglican Church, as established in 1560. A central
function of the college was to ensure a supply of well-educated
clergy to the service of that church. The provost and fellows had to
be Anglicans. In its early years Trinity College does not appear to
have insisted on religious tests for admitting students, and a small
number of Catholic lay students did attend. In 1627, however,
Charles I, under royal authority, appropriated the right to make
statutes and imposed an exclusively Anglican character on the
college. A series of tests and oaths was introduced which prohibited
Catholics and dissenters from attending, a situation which was to
prevail until the close of the eighteenth century.16 It was only with
the passing of the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 that Catholics and nonconformists were legally entitled to enter and obtain degrees, though
professorships, fellowships and scholarships of the college continued
to be confined to members of the established church. What later
came to be termed the ‘Irish university question’, which dominated a
large part of the nineteenth-century Irish debates, had its beginnings
in the latter end of the eighteenth century. This centred on efforts to
acquire higher education, in a form acceptable to them, for Catholic
and Presbyterian clergy and laity to whom Trinity College, the only
university institution in Ireland, was effectively closed.
Four major parties to this involved and singularly protracted issue
can be identified. Firstly, there was the British government, which
ruled Ireland directly since the Act of Union in 1801. The growth of
Irish nationalism, both revolutionary and constitutional, ensured that
Irish issues, including the provision of university education, occupied
an increasingly prominent position in the agenda of successive
British administrations.17
Secondly, there was the Church of Ireland which, until its
disestablishment in 1869, was the state church and was also the
church of the ruling élite. Even after disestablishment it was closely
associated with the landed aristocracy and the professions and
continued to occupy the dominant position in Irish society and the
state. Trinity College was regarded by Irish churchmen as the
intellectual centre of their educational infrastructure and in general
they were assiduous in maintaining its Anglican character. While this
attitude was modified during the course of the nineteenth century, it
was not fundamentally changed.
Thirdly, there were the dissenters, who were mainly Presbyterians,
located almost exclusively in Ulster and who maintained cultural
links with Scotland. Ulster Presbyterians had played a pivotal role in
the later eighteenth century in the struggle for national independence,
through the United Irishmen movement. But after the ill-fated
rebellion of 1798, which led to the abolition of the Irish Parliament
and the consequent Act of Union of Ireland with Great Britain in
1801, the Ulster Presbyterians renounced nationalism. But the
majority of Presbyterians did not differ from Anglicans and Catholics
in demanding strict denominationalism in education. Consequently
their demands for an institutionally independent educational structure
constituted a central part of the university education question during
this period.
Finally there were the Catholics, who constituted three-quarters of
the population. By the end of the eighteenth century they were
emerging from seventy-five years of economic, social, and political
subjugation. The Catholic Relief Act of 1793 was a critical turning
point. Full emancipation was not to be achieved until 1829, as a
result of sustained agitation under the leadership of Daniel
O’Connell. As the nineteenth century proceeded the Catholic
population adopted home rule as their central political objective, and
with the extension of parliamentary democracy they became the
strongest force in Irish politics. These developments were ultimately
to lead to a realignment of the social and political configuration of
the country, and their implications for university education were no
less profound. In response to the demands of the Catholic majority
new institutions were established, such as Maynooth College in the
1790s, to cater for the education of the Catholic clergy, the Queen’s
Colleges in the 1840s, and the Catholic University in 1854. As a
result the pivotal position of Trinity College was challenged by these
institutional developments. More significantly the social and
economic philosophy of the ruling élite was also increasingly
challenged by two major forces, which were to influence
crucially the direction of political and social developments during the
nineteenth century, Irish nationalism and the Catholic Church. It is
against this background that Whately’s arrival in Dublin in 1831 and
his subsequent activities in Ireland and at Trinity must be viewed.
Very shortly after his arrival in Dublin, and notwithstanding the
various problems which faced the established church in Ireland at
this time, Whately turned his attention to Trinity College, perceiving
as a major defect the absence of any teaching of political economy.
He immediately set about rectifying this situation. At a meeting of
the board of Trinity College on 31 December 1831 a communication
was read which contained a proposal for the establishment of a
professorship in political economy which was to be held for a
maximum period of five years, with the Archbishop providing a
stipend of £100 per annum,18 a payment which he continued to
contribute until his death. Examinations for the position were held on
9 July 1832, and on 31 October of the same year the first Whately
Professor of Political Economy, Mountifort Longfield, was
appointed.19
The regulations governing the Whately Professorship were
contained in an entry in the Calendar for Dublin University for the
following year and read as follows:
1 The Professor to be at least a Master of Arts, or Bachelor in
Civil Law, who has regularly graduated in the University of
Dublin, Oxford, or Cambridge.
2 The Professor, from time to time, to be elected by the Provost
and Senior Fellows of Trinity College.
3 No person to hold the office for more than five successive years,
or to be re-elected until after the expiration of two years.
4 Every Professor to read in Term during any one of the four
Academical Terms in every year, in a place appointed by the
Provost, A Course of Lectures on Political Economy, consisting
of nine Lectures at the least; and also, during every year, to print
and present to the Provost, Senior Fellows, and Visitors, one of
such Lectures at the least. The Lectures to be free to all
graduates. Under-graduates to be recommended by their tutors.
Private courses may be superadded at the discretion of the
Professor.
5 Every Professor to give public notice of the time proposed for
the commencement of every Course of Lectures.
6 Three persons, at the least, are required to constitute a Class.
7 Every Professor neglecting to give notice or, on the attendance
of a Class to read a Course of Lectures during the time and in the
manner aforesaid, or to print and publish one Lecture at the least
forfeits the whole of his stipend or salary for the year or years in
which such neglect takes place; the amount of the forfeiture to be
laid out in the Funds, and the interest applied to the
augmentation of the Professorship in future.
8 The first Professor not absolutely required to read or publish any
Course of Lectures during the first year of his election.20
Whately’s offer of the establishment of a chair of political economy
was initially ‘received with a caution that verged on suspicion’.21
This assessment is borne out by the account given by his daughter
Elizabeth Jane Whately:
In the year 1832 Archbishop Whately founded the
Professorship of Political Economy which bears his name in the
University of Dublin. This was an enterprise attended with
considerable difficulty, owing to the general ignorance of the
subject in the University. It was hard to prevent those to whom
the science was new from imagining that it had something to do
with party politics which, in his own words, ‘had about as
much to do with political economy as they had with
manufactures or agriculture’.22
Whately’s concern with the initial appointments appeared to centre
on the need to keep party political considerations from intruding on
the competition for the Professorship, and indeed from the content of
lectures to be given by the successful candidates. Writing to the
provost of Trinity in March, Whately commented:
Allow me to repeat what I said in the former occasion that I do
hope political party will be excluded from the competition. We
have enough and too much of it in almost all departments of
life; but the name of Political Economy is too apt to cause its
being confounded with Politics, with which it is no more
connected than it is with Farming, Commerce or Almsgiving.23
Whately again wrote to the provost on the subject in May: ‘The
question will I hope serve to indicate to the candidates, what I hope
you will take care to impress on them the elementary non-political
character of the lectures they will be expected to give’.24 This
concern was again in evidence when Whately wrote to the provost as
follows:
I earnestly hope the candidate you may select may in every
respect do credit to the College, and most especially may
redeem the science from the influence of the vulgar error which
confounds it with Politics and free all connection with political
partizanship.25
Some years later, in 1848, addressing the conclusion of the first
session of the Dublin Statistical Society, Whately recounted, with
some obvious amusement, the reception his offer initially received in
Trinity College. There was clearly a fear among the college
authorities that no suitable candidate for the chair would be
available.26 The provost of Trinity related to Whately that ‘in the
absence of any person having a full knowledge of the science, a
person should be selected…who should be of sound and safe
conservative views’.27 The Archbishop declared himself to be
‘appalled at the introduction of party politics into a subject of
abstract science’.28 Whately maintained a keen and abiding interest in
the appointment of candidates to the chair until his death in office in
1863.
As we noted, when the chair was established graduates of the
Universities of Dublin, Oxford, and Cambridge were eligible for
appointment. The Queen’s Colleges were founded in 1845, in
Belfast, Cork, and Galway, and it appears that Whately allowed their
graduates to compete. In 1861, for instance, John Monroe, who had
graduated from Galway in 1857, winning its Senior Scholarship in
Metaphysical and Economic Science in 1858–9, and who was later to
become a judge in the High Court of Ireland,29 was a candidate for
the Whately Chair.30 Longfield, Butt, Hancock, and Cairnes were the
examiners, incidentally, and among the other candidates was Leonard
Courtney, then Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, who was
favoured by Cairnes.31 Houston, however, was the successful
applicant. There is evidence in an unpublished letter of Cairnes, to
his wife Eliza, to suggest that after Whately’s death the board of
Trinity College attempted to exclude graduates of the Queen’s
Colleges, a development which greatly angered Cairnes, who then
occupied chairs in both Galway and London. The letter, dated 24
April 1866, is long but is worth reproducing at length:
You will I dare say not be sorry to hear that I have been
relieved of a rather troublesome job I had undertaken, although
the way in which this has happened has been such as greatly to
disgust me. I forget whether I told you that Houston wrote to
me some time ago announcing the intention of the Board of
Trinity College to continue the endowment of the Whately
Professorship of Pol. Economy, and asking me to take part in
the examination for the new Professor. I at once assented, and
entered into arrangements with Houston as to the part I was to
take. In the course of our correspondence it turned out, almost
accidentally, that the Trinity College Board had decided to
exclude from the competition students of the Queen’s Colleges,
who with those of Oxford and Cambridge were admitted to it
by Whately. The moment I discovered this, I wrote a letter in
the most indignant terms I could command expressing the pain
with which I had heard of the intention to ‘degrade the Dublin
chair from the liberal footing on which it had been placed by its
Founder’, and begging that my name should be removed from
the list of examiners. Houston has written me in reply,
entreating me with a great deal of feeble reasoning to
reconsider my determination. Of course I have not done so, and
will not do so. The proceeding is simply a piece of paltry
donnish spite, such as could only be committed by a close
Corporation equally unalive to the interests of Science and to
their own real dignity. However, I have written Houston a letter
which if he sends it in to the Board, will I think drive them
pretty nearly mad, and this is but the beginning of their sorrows.
Thompson, who has taken up the matter in a spirit that has
greatly pleased me is prepared to write a stinging letter to the
Daily News denouncing this unworthy proceeding in suitable
terms. I have written to James McDonnell begging him to bring
the affair under Judge Longfield’s notice, and I am in hopes that
the Judge may also withdraw from the examination, though this
is doubtful. Shd this happen, the examining staff will be
reduced to Butt, and Houston, whose imprimatur will not give
much prestige to the chair. The upshot of all this is that for the
present I am relieved from the examination, which I know my
pettins will rejoice at—naughty pettins not to have more public
spirit.32
For whatever reason, it seems unlikely that the board of Trinity
College persisted with its new policy, for both Robert Cather
Donnell, who occupied the chair from 1872–7, and James Johnston
Shaw, his immediate successor (1877–82), were educated at Queen’s
College Belfast. As noted above, and in keeping with his objective of
providing for the dissemination of political economy at all levels of
the educational system, on his arrival in Dublin Whately quickly
turned his attention to Trinity. He was not the first to make the
observation that political economy was a regrettable omission from
the Trinity curriculum. The significance of political economy as a
distinct discipline and the desirability of its introduction into the
curriculum at Trinity College Dublin had been a recurring theme
during the eighteenth century. One of the earliest recommendations
for the inclusion of political economy or ‘trade’, as it was then
called, appeared in Thomas Prior’s pamphlet published in Dublin in
1729 entitled A List of the Absentees of Ireland where he argued that
the study of trade should be facilitated by the foundation of a chair at
Trinity College. A similar recommendation was made by Samuel
Madden in his Memoirs published in 1733.
These recommendations were not pursued, and towards the end of
the eighteenth century the Revd Robert Burrowes, a fellow of the
college, again advocated the introduction of political economy. This
he did in a pamphlet published in Dublin in 1792 entitled,
Observations on the Course of Science Taught at Present in Trinity
College, Dublin, with Some Improvements Suggested Therein.
Burrowes cited Adam Smith’s condemnation of ‘the course of
Education established in most Universities as teaching a species of
Learning which has been long exploded by the World’, while later
scientific discoveries were neglected. Chemistry was one science and
‘that Science the object of which is the Wealth of Nations’ was the
other which were ‘in such general repute, that no person can form
any pretensions to a Literary Character, or hold almost any
communication with the World, without being acquainted with their
fundamental principles’. Yet, he added, ‘these and other branches of
Knowledge of no less importance make at present no part of our
Course’. Burrowes suggested that political economy be incorporated
as part of ethics, and his proposed curriculum combined an
historically based study, in the Scottish manner, ‘of the progress of
civil Society from the simplicity and rudeness of the earliest time to
the refinements of modern cultivation’, along with more
conventional topics in political economy. Interestingly, his suggested
authors were, without exception, Scottish: Robertson, Ferguson,
Miller, Steward, and Adam Smith.33
Notwithstanding these repeated recommendations for the inclusion
of political economy in Trinity’s course of studies, the establishment
of the first chair in the subject had to await Whately’s arrival. In this
Whately was greatly facilitated in that his arrival in Dublin coincided
with the appointment of Bartholomew Lloyd as provost in 1831.
Lloyd is regarded as one of the great reforming provosts in the
college’s history. Concerning the period between 1794 and 1831,
which is viewed as a critical turning point in the history of Trinity
College, McDowell and Webb have written:
For a generation academic society went, as it were, to ground,
and lived in a limbo that was characteristic of neither century.
Only in 1831, when Bartholomew Lloyd became Provost and
inaugurated a series of important and far-sighted reforms, did
there emerge clearly in the College that attitude towards
scholarship and education which was to characterise the
nineteenth century.34
The structure of teaching of political economy in Trinity was
governed by the regulations, referred to in the previous section, laid
down by Whately and modelled on the Drummond Professorship of
Political Economy at Oxford. These were a carefully structured set of
minimal conditions within which the holder of the chair was to
discharge his duties. Commenting on these regulations, one of the
earliest holders of the chair, Isaac Butt, complained that, ‘the
regulations under which this Professorship is placed make it
impossible for the person holding it to attempt anything like a regular
course of instruction in Political Economy’.35 R.D.Collison Black,
reacting to Butt’s comment, accepted this state of affairs as ‘almost
inevitable’ given ‘the state of economic knowledge and opinion then
prevailing in Ireland’, along with
the general and almost ‘popular’ character of the instruction
given, together with the fact that the short term of office at first
attracted young graduates who usually had law rather than
political economy in view for a permanent career, prevented the
appearance of any strong teaching tradition.36
Lloyd’s appointment as provost marked ‘the beginning of a series of
important reforms which affected nearly all aspects of the College’s
educational activities’.37 These reforms included: the restructuring of
terms and vacation into something resembling their modern form, the
introduction of a tutorial system, the establishment of two new chairs
(one of which was the Whately Chair), the introduction of the
distinction between pass and honours courses, and the setting up of
moderatorships. (The title ‘moderator’, which is unique to Dublin
University, is applied to a successful candidate at the BA honours
examinations, and the term ‘moderatorship’ refers to an honours
degree programme.) The latter reforms are clearly of interest since
they provided the overall structure for the teaching of political
economy for the remainder of the century. These reforms were
negotiated at board level during the course of 1833 and came into
effect in Michaelmas term in 1834. The introduction of the passhonours distinction resulted in a considerable reduction in the
number of prescribed textbooks for those taking pass courses. In
contrast, for those taking honours, the changes led to a more
comprehensive and advanced course being devised for them in every
term of the four-year degree course. The philosophy underlying these
changes was relatively straightforward. Pass candidates were to
pursue a more restricted and less advanced course than heretofore, but
would be expected to have assimilated it thoroughly. Honours
candidates, in contrast, would pursue a more comprehensive course
than previously prescribed, but a less detailed knowledge would be
required.38 These changes would be reflected, in due course, in the
structure of the curriculum for political economy. In addition, the
honours courses would become the vehicles for introducing new
subject areas into the degree courses. The successful candidates at the
final degree examinations, having pursued honours courses, would
henceforth be termed moderators, and specialisation within degree
courses would, in future, be pursued through the creation of separate
moderatorships in individual, or in different groups of individual
subject areas. At the time of Lloyd’s reform in 1834, three
moderatorships were introduced, and over the next fifty years more
were added which included political economy as an integral part. We
will trace chronologically the principal developments in the teaching
of political economy in the period 1832 to 1900, by reference to its
position within the overall degree structure, its course contents,
where available, and particularly the reading material prescribed by
the various holders of the Whately Chair for the different courses in
political economy.
As early as 1837, five years after the establishment of the chair,
the provost and senior fellows instituted a prize in political economy
which was to be awarded on the basis of an annual examination and
confined to students in the bachelor classes. The calendar entries
concerning the requirements for this prize provide valuable evidence
of the reading material which formed the basis for the examinations
as prescribed by the earliest holders of this chair. The recommended
reading for the prize examinations in 1839, for instance, induded
Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Longfield’s Lectures, Whately’s Lectures
and Senior’s Lectures.39 The then Professor, Isaac Butt, also
recommended additional works which could be consulted ‘with
advantage’, including works of Say and Ricardo, along with
Huskisson’s pamphlet concerning the question of currency and the
balance of trade. Particularly recommended was Longfield’s theory of
profit and, not too surprisingly perhaps, the lecture Rent, Profits, and
Labour, ‘published by the present Professor’.40
The entry by Professor James Anthony Lawson, the third holder of
the Whately Chair, for the same examination in 1842, was somewhat
more cautious with respect to individual authors included in the
reading list, with Ricardo coming in for particular attention. It stated:
The Professor recommends to Candidates, as works from which
the fundamental truths of the science may be correctly and
readily gathered, the article ‘Political Economy’, in the
Encyclopaedia Metropolitana; and Longfield’s Lectures
on ‘Political Economy’; and those on ‘Commerce and
Absenteeism’, and Archbishop Whately’s Lectures. After these
the great work of Adam Smith can be read with more
advantage, and, taking care to make such corrections as an
acquaintance with the above works will show to be necessary,
the Treatise of Mr. Ricardo, M’Culloch’s note to Adam Smith,
and Chalmer’s ‘Political Economy’ may be then consulted.41
Lawson also initiated changes in the structure of the examination in
political economy. In addition to an examination in the general
principles of the subject, Lawson selected a specific topic each year
which would ‘constitute a great part of [the candidate’s] Examination,
and with which it is necessary that the candidates should make
themselves especially well acquainted’.42 This development does not
appear to have been maintained by his successor in the chair, but was
reintroduced by Professor C.F. Bastable in the 1880s.
In 1847 Professor W.N.Hancock added considerably to the basic
course of instruction in political economy by providing two
additional private courses of lectures, one for candidates for the prize
in political economy, the other for students commencing the study of
the science.43 In the same year J.S.Mill made his first appearance on
a reading list, with his Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of
Political Economy. That year—known in Ireland as ‘Black ‘47’, the
culmination of the Great Famine—is of immense significance in Irish
economic and social history, so it is not surprising to find a number of
works on poor laws and the conditions of the labouring classes, along
with the Reports of the Commissioners Inquiring into the Operation
of Poor Laws in England (1834) being included on Hancock’s
reading lists. Two years later, in 1849, the first European material, in
the form of M.P.Rossi’s Cours d’Economie Politique, was introduced
into the reading list. Porter’s translation of Bastiat’s Sophismes
Economiques appeared the following year.
During the course of the early 1850s developments in a somewhat
distant area of learning within Trinity College led to political economy
being included in a new moderatorship. These developments resulted
from the appointment of Richard McDonnell as provost in 1852. This
left vacant the chair of oratory, which was filled by John Kells
Ingram, a man of some significance for Irish political economy,
though never occupying a chair in that subject. Ingram extended,
with the approval of the board, the scope of the chair of oratory to
include English literature, and he was thereafter termed the Professor
of Oratory and English Literature. Ingram’s lectures were to form the
basis for a new moderatorship, but English literature alone was
considered too ‘soft’ an option for a degree course, so the course was
‘hardened’ by the inclusion of modern history, jurisprudence, and
political economy. The political economy course was moved from its
location within the ethics and logic course where, according to
McDowell and Webb, it would have been placed as a result of
Whately’s influence.44 The same authors are of the opinion that the
‘prescribed reading’ in these various subjects within the
moderatorship was not very adventurous: Smith, Mill, and Senior in
economics, in jurisprudence selections from Blackstone and Smith on
contracts, the history of England and France up to 1789, English
literature from Shakespeare and Bacon to Johnson and Goldsmith,
with some simple philology. But, nevertheless, they add the
comment that with ‘Ingram, Anster and Cairnes as lecturers the
course must have been quite a stimulating one’,45
By 1857, twenty-five years after the founding of the chair, and a
year after J.E.Cairnes had succeeded to it, the required reading list
was as follows:
Introductory work
Easy Lessons on Money Matters
Whately’s Lectures on Political Economy
Professor Hancock’s Introductory Lecture
Works on the general principles of the science
Mr Senior’s Treatise on Political Economy, from the
Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.
Dr Lawson’s Five Lectures on Political Economy omitting
Appendix.
Dr Longfield’s Lectures on Political Economy.
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Book I (omitting Chapter
XI to the end, inclusive), Book II, Book IV.
Mr John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, Book
I (omitting Chaps. i, ii, and iii); Book II (omitting Chaps. xviii
and xxi); Book V. Essay No. 2, of the essays of the same
author.
Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy, chaps. vii,viii,
xx, xxi, xxv, xxviii.
Labour and Capital, by C.Morrisson
Works on banking and currency
Professor Hussey Walsh’s Elementary Treatise on Metallic
Currency
Tooke’s History of Prices, Vol. IV, Chap. i, part 3.
Articles on Banking and Banks, and the Funds in
M’Culloch’s Commercial Dictionary. (To be read in one of the
late editions.)46
While the above was the material on which examinations in political
economy would be based, the structure of the degree programme for
undergraduates was contained within a four-year degree course,
divided into junior freshman, senior freshman, junior sophister, and
senior sophister years respectively. The undergraduate courses for
each examination were divided into two parts: one which was read by
all students and did not include any courses in political economy
(these were presumably the pass courses); the other was read by
those aspiring to honours. For the honours course, political economy
was combined with history in a separate section, and was taught in
Michaelmas term in both junior and senior sophister years. The basic
requisite reading for these honours courses was Senior’s Treatise on
Political Economy and Mill’s Political Economy, Book III along with
the first six chapters of Book V.47 By 1864 a number of changes,
worth noting, occurred in the reading material for the prize
examinations: Ricardo’s works were deleted, and Cairnes’s Character
and Logical Method of Political Economy appeared on the reading
lists for the first time. This latter text was to remain on the reading lists
in Trinity College for the remainder of the century.
The 1870s saw a number of developments in the subject matter of
political economy in Trinity College. Early in the decade, in 1871, a
Whately Memorial Prize in Political Economy was established,
which was financed from the earnings of the residual funds
accumulated for the erection of a bust to Archbishop Whately in St
Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. This prize was to be awarded every five
years.48 The first winner of this prize was a John Dockrill in 1872.49
More significant, from the point of view of the teaching of political
economy, was the fact that in 1873 the moderatorship in English
literature, history, jurisprudence and political economy, which had
been initiated by Ingram was abandoned50 and political economy was
relocated in a different moderatorship with history and political
science. The reading material was extended and induded the works of
Smith, J.S.Mill, W.T.Thornton, W.N.Hancock, T.E.Cliffe Leslie,
J.E.Cairnes, F. Harrison, and G.J.Goschen (this was his first
appearance on a reading list). In 1874 additional material was
appended to the required reading list for the prize examinations by
Robert Cather Donnell, who acceded to the chair in 1872. These
included Fawcett’s Manual of Political Economy, R.H.Mills’s
Lectures on Currency and Banking, A.Houston’s Principles of
Value, and a translation by Cobden of M.Chevalier’s On
Depreciation of Gold.51 By 1876 Donnell had further extended the
reading material for both the political economy section in the
moderatorship and for the prize examinations, to include additional
material by Cairnes, specifically his articles ‘Political economy and
land’ and ‘Political economy and laissez-faire’, Essays in Political
Economy and Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly
Expounded. The list also included Hancock’s Local Government and
Taxation in Ireland, Broderick’s Local Government and Taxation in
England, R.B.D. Morier’s Local Government and Taxation in
Germany, and De Laveleye’s Le Marche Monétaire et ses Crises.52
Shortly after this Bagehot’s Lombard Street and the Cobden Club
Essays (second series) were added.
Towards the close of the decade, in 1877, Trinity College was
added, by the Secretary of State for India, to the list of institutions in
which selected candidates for the civil service of India would be
permitted to reside.53 As part of the course for a writership in the
civil service of India, preparation for which extended over a two-year
period, political economy was included among five nominated
subjects for the second year of study. The political economy course
included the following works: Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Mill’s
Principles of Political Economy, Ricardo’s Political Economy,
Northcote’s Twenty Years of Financial Policy, and Goschen’s
Foreign Exchanges.
When C.F.Bastable succeeded to the Whately Chair in 1882, he
broke with precedent by negotiating a life tenure and occupied the
position for the next fifty years until 1932. He too introduced a
number of changes into the courses in political economy. The
required reading for his honours course in the senior sophister year was
dominated by Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, but Marshall
made his first appearance on the course, represented by his
Economics of Industry,54 while in the moderatorship new works such
as L.Cossa’s Guide to the Study of Political Economy, and
F.A.Walker’s Money and Its Relations to Trade and Industry were
introduced.55 The structure of the prize examinations was also altered.
The course of this examination was now divided into two parts, one
general, the other based on a special topic which could vary from year
to year. The special topic for 1884, the first year of its operation, was
‘Crises and Periods of Depression’. The authors included for study
for the reorganised prize examinations were: Walker, Jevons (this was
his first appearance on a reading list), Bagehot, Goschen, Mill, and
Cairnes.56
By 1890 Mill’s Principles had been replaced by Walker’s Political
Economy in the honours course reading for senior sophisters,57 and
for the moderatorship examinations the following additions to the
reading material had been included: Ingram’s History of Political
Economy, Toynbee’s Industrial Revolution, and Bastable’s own
International Trade.58 By 1900 Marshall’s Principles was widely
used, particularly in the honours course for senior sophisters, and the
political economy component of the moderatorship which was now
retitled ‘Economics and Economic History’, reflecting the
contracting scope of the subject and the emergence of economic
history as a specialisation. The course for the moderatorship
consisted, at the turn of the century, of ‘a knowledge of (a) Economic
Theory and the History of the Chief doctrines; (b) the existing
Economic conditions in the United Kingdom; (c) English Economic
History’.59 The reading material included, in addition to the works of
Smith, Mill, and Marshall, Nicholson’s Money, Clare’s Money
Market Primer, Rae’s Contemporary Socialism, and Ashley’s
English Economic History.60 By this stage also a third prize, the
Cobden Prize, was being awarded every third year to the successful
candidate in political economy.
A number of more general observations can be made on the
teaching of political economy by the various holders of the Whately
Chair in the nineteenth century. The development was mainly to be
seen in the continued elaboration and refinement of the course
structures in political economy (particularly in the honours courses),
in the creation of a number of moderatorships which included
political economy as an integral component, and in the institution of
a number of competitive prizes in political economy. Certainly by
1857, twenty five years after the establishment of the chair, Isaac
Butt’s comments were no longer valid. The structure and contents of
the different political economy courses were well established and the
foundations of a solid teaching tradition were well in place.
Unfortunately the Trinity College records do not provide information
on the numbers of students taking political economy, and
consequently comparisons with other university institutions within
Ireland or elsewhere are not feasible. In addition to its ordinary
teaching, special courses were offered for particular purposes from
the 1870s onwards, such as the Indian civil service examinations.
Secondly, a number of observations may be made with reference to
the required reading for the various courses. There was a small
number of authors whose works dominated for long periods,
constituting, as it were, a ‘hard core’ of essential material. These
included Smith, Mill, Senior, and Whately himself, certainly during
his lifetime. Ricardo, interestingly, received a much more mixed
reception at the hands of the Whately Professors. In addition there
was an impressive showing by Irish authors, many of them Whately
Professors, such as Longfield, Cairnes, and later Bastable, and to a
lesser extent, Hancock and Hussey Walsh. At best this practice
attested to the quality of Irish economic writing, while at worst it was
little more than a bit of harmless mutual back-scratching among
academic and legal colleagues and leading members of the Irish
intelligentsia. However, the status and significance of Longfield’s
and Cairnes’s work within the history of economic thought scarcely
makes it necessary to defend their presence on university reading
lists in Trinity or anywhere else. The presence of works by
continental authors, either in their original language or in translation,
remained minimal during the course of the nineteenth century. The
virtual absence of untranslated works may be explicable largely on
linguistic grounds. Finally there was, in most cases, perceptible
changes in course structure and content corresponding with the
interests, priorities, and indeed abilities of the various holders of the
chair. Whately’s regulation had the effect, as noted by Black, ‘of
bringing a succession of fresh minds in contact with the subject and,
still more important, of ensuring the publication of their views’,61 and
this result was clearly ‘foreseen, no doubt, by Whately’.62 It must be
noted, however, that some of the holders brought fresher and more
formidable minds than others to the chair, something which is
already perceptible in their different contributions to the
development of the teaching programme, but which will become
even more pronounced in the quality and status of their published
work, which we now briefly examine.
Professor J.K.Galbraith recently declared that ‘all races have
produced notable economists with the exception of the Irish who can
doubtless protest their devotion to higher arts’.63 This apparently safe
generalisation scarcely does justice to some of the estimable men
who occupied the Whately Chair at Trinity College Dublin. Galbraith
contrived to overlook the fact that since the earlier part of this
century, beginning with the work of Seligman in 1903,64 the holders
of the Whately Chair have been recognised by historians of economic
thought as constituting an important group of political economists
who contributed very significantly to a number of areas of economic
theory.65 Indeed they were later raised to the status of constituting a
‘school of thought’.66 The principal topic around which the ‘Dublin
School’ centred was undoubtedly their formulation of and
commitment to a subjective theory of value thirty-five years before
its more formal articulation in the hands of Jevons and Menger.
However, as Black observes, ‘it must be admitted at the outset…that
this claim involves some misuse of the word ‘school’, which
normally connotes a body of disciples of one teacher or a group
having a connected system of doctrine in common.67 Nevertheless
that there was a large degree of unanimity and intellectual unity
among the first holders of the Whately Chair is not in question. ‘What
is remarkable’, Black notes, is that the ‘principles of the Dublin
Professors should so steadily have run counter to the trend of
received opinion, for from the first labour or cost-or-production
theories of value are either refuted or given a very subordinate place
by them’,68 and this in a period when the labour or costs-ofproduction theories of value held the dominant doctrinal position.
Whately himself was hostile to the labour theory of value and
advocated the utility approach in the manner of his friend and
predecessor at Oxford, Nassau Senior.69 Whately’s own
contributions on this topic were rather limited and amounted to no
more than a few brief, but interesting comments. Nevertheless, the
received view of Whately’s personal influence on the
selection process of candidates for the chair would account at least for
the general ‘direction of study’ pursued by the early holders of the
chair on the topic of value theory. The most significant contribution
to the formulation of the subjective theory of value was undoubtedly
that of the first holder of the chair, Mountifort Longfield, who must
be considered the effective founder of the Dublin School.70 His was
the most complete offering on the subject, and it was contained in his
Lectures on Political Economy, Delivered in Trinity and Michaelmas
Terms, 1833, published in Dublin in 1834. The originality of
Longfield’s contribution, however, did not secure him a place among
the leading theorists of his day. He remained, certainly outside
Ireland, firmly ensconced in Seligman’s unenviable category of
‘neglected economists’ of the nineteenth century. Seligman, in fact,
referred to him as ‘in some respects the most remarkable of all’ the
writers he had ‘discovered’.71
Longfield’s successors continued to expound and develop the
utility or subjective approach to the theory of value. This was
certainly true of Isaac Butt, his immediate successor. James Anthony
Lawson, who succeeded Butt in 1841, was a firm adherent of the
subjective theory and provided, in an Appendix to his Five Lectures
on Political Economy, published in 1844, a particularly lucid
treatment of the subject. William Neilson Hancock, who succeeded
Lawson in 1846, provided what has been described as ‘one of the
most interesting discussions of value theory given by any member of
this group of Dublin economists’72 The originality of Hancock’s
contribution is all the more striking considering that he was primarily
interested in practical issues, an orientation generally held to be
inimical to the production of economic theory. The significance of
Hancock’s contribution lay in the fact that, in addition to providing
considerable clarification of a number of aspects of the subjective
theory of value as bequeathed by Longfield, he suggested how
distribution theory could be viewed as part of a more generalised
theory of pricing, a development which was later to become an
integral part of the theoretical core of neoclassical economics in the
Walrasian tradition.
Hancock resigned from the Whately Chair in 1851. His successor
Richard Hussey Walsh does not appear to fit as comfortably into the
tradition of commitment to and continued elaboration of the utility
theory of value that characterised the previous four holders of the
chair. While there is no compelling evidence to suggest that Walsh was
not an intellectual adherent of the Whately-Longfield tradition with
respect to value theory, his support was more implicit in form, and
consequently its interpretation is more problematic. Ambiguity,
however, was never a feature of the thought of Walsh’s successor,
John Elliot Cairnes, in relation to the subjective approach to the
theory of value. Cairnes was never a supporter of this approach,
adhering firmly to a cost-of-production theory, and never conceding
on this question to either ‘his predecessors in Ireland or his
successors in England’. We too may ask the intriguing question,
posed by Black, whether and how Cairnes reconciled his theories
with those in Longfield’s Lectures, which were prescribed reading
for the students he examined.73 The final representative of the Dublin
School was Arthur Houston, who succeeded Cairnes to the chair in
1861. He was faced with the task of synthesising the conflicting
doctrines on value then prevailing in Trinity College. In his efforts to
achieve such a synthesis Houston displayed considerable analytical
ability and developed a number of interesting concepts, some of
which have become very familiar, albeit in somewhat different garb,
to modern students of economics. When Houston resigned in 1866,
the ‘marginalist revolution’, with its subjective value theory, was a
mere six years away. The Dublin School’s contribution, even if
unacknowledged at the time, must be considered one of, if not the
most impressive precursors of that ‘revolution’ in terms of its
coherence and sustained elaboration at the hands of the first
generation of Whately Professors.
In addition to their strikingly original contributions to the utility
approach to the theory of value, the Whately Professors made
distinguished and original contributions to a number of areas of
political economy. According to Black ‘it may reasonably be claimed
that in the past century the economists of Trinity College have been
responsible for original contributions to almost every branch of their
subject’.74 While this assessment may err on the generous side, the
Dublin economists differed in a number of areas from their
contemporaries and anticipated in several instances later
developments which were to become integral parts of accepted
theoretical orthodoxy. One of these areas, which was closely related
to developments in the theory of value, was distribution theory and,
as we have seen already, Hancock made several important
suggestions as to their conceptual integration. Given the commitment
of the early Whately Professors to a utility-based theory of value,
with its emphasis on demand, it is not too surprising to find that their
distribution theory should be also based on a demand approach, with
productivity and scarcity being introduced to explain factor prices.
Important contributions in the development of this theoretical
approach are to be found in the works of Longfield and Butt. In
particular, their contributions to the theory of wages and profits bear
striking similarities to the work of the leading European theorists,
such as von Thünen and the later Austrian School. It should be noted
here that Cairnes was not involved in these developments in the
Dublin School, remaining a staunch adherent of the Ricardian
analysis. With respect to the theory of rent, the Dublin economists
remained, on the whole, within the Ricardian tradition, but they
contributed important modifications to this theoretical structure,
particularly Longfield and Butt. On this topic Whately himself had,
according to Bowley ‘the most admirable ideas on rent as the
consequence of immobilities of certain factors or groups of
factors’.75 Arguably, even if the Dublin School had never contributed
to the subjective theory of value, their contributions to distribution
theory should, other things being equal, have earned them a secure
place in the history of economic thought, although it is difficult to
conceive of their particular input into distribution theory divorced
from the theory of value.
Whately Professors also contributed very significantly to the
theory of international trade. Longfield, Butt, and Cairnes, and
particularly Bastable published important works in this area.
Longfield’s contribution to this topic deserves the distinction ‘of
having given the first statement of several points which are now an
accepted part of international trade theory’.76 These included, among
others, contributions by Longfield to such topics as the causes of
international specialisation, the role of demand in international trade,
and the analysis of trade in more than two commodities. Isaac Butt’s
contribution concerned his advocacy of protection and its effects, and
in the course of this analysis contributed an astute and perceptive
assessment of the relative strength and limitations of the prevailing
classical analysis of this topic. Cliffe Leslie later singled out Butt’s
unique concern with protection when he wrote, ‘in the United
Kingdom only a single professor of the science—the late Isaac Butt,
who for a time held the chair of Political Economy in the University
of Dublin—has shown any leaning towards protection’77 In contrast,
Cairnes was a firm advocate of the classical orthodoxy in
international trade. His principal contributions, in addition to an
impressive systematisation of the classical doctrine on trade, included
the application of the concept of non-competing groups to the
problems of international trade, a seminal contribution to the analysis
of the mechanism of international lending and the influence of loans
on international trade, along with an examination of the effect of gold
discoveries on prices and trade.
Perhaps the most distinguished contributions to international trade
theory by a Whately Professor was that of C.F.Bastable. Bastable’s
contribution to this area of economics can be viewed as an
elaboration and development of the classical school of nineteenthcentury economics. More specifically, his contributions represented a
series of major theoretical extensions to the existing Ricardo-Mill
theory of trade, through the introduction of a number of important
qualifications. These included, firstly, allowing for varying elasticities
of demand in the determination of international values. Secondly,
where Ricardo and Mill had assumed constant returns to scale in
production for their analysis, Bastable introduced increasing and
decreasing returns to scale, thereby greatly extending the scope of the
theoretical framework. Thirdly, he provided a more elaborate
analysis of the hindrances to competition and other obstacles to free
trade than had been supplied by Mill. In addition, Bastable also made
a number of improvements and corrections to Mill’s analysis of the
international payments system, particularly where the source of these
payments did not originate in commerce.78 Just as Cairnes’s name is
invariably linked with the concept of ‘non-competing groups’, so too
is Bastable honoured in the form of the ‘Mill-Bastable condition’,
which has become an integral part of the analysis of protection. No
less an authority than F.Y.Edgeworth, the distinguished Irish
economist and holder of the Drummond Professorship of Political
Economy at Oxford, and a leading theorist in mathematical
economics, had to concede to the correctness of Bastable’s analysis
concerning the impact of import and export taxes.79 Edgeworth held
Bastable’s work in international trade theory in the very highest
regard. He considered Bastable’s Theory of International Trade as
‘the best manual on the most difficult part of Economics’.80
An aspect of economics which was not of major concern to the
early Whately Professors, but which later in the century emerged as
an important area of study, was public finance. In this field Bastable
produced a number of outstanding works, particularly his Public
Finance, first published in 1892. Professor G.A. Duncan, who
succeeded Bastable in the Whately Chair in 1932, has argued that
Bastable’s principal intellectual interest was not trade theory but
public finance, ‘a field in which, for the British Isles, he was a
pioneer, and laid the foundations of a systematic study’.81 This
systematic study was contained in Public Finance, which Duncan
described as ‘the best text-book in English for its organisation,
synoptic treatment, and sense of proportion’.82 Other commentators
on this work were no less laudatory. Edgeworth, referring to a later
edition of the work, described it as ‘this now classical work’.83 Henry
Higgs referred to it as ‘a work of assured position, which seemed
destined to be revived again and again’,84 while L.L.Price, writing in
the Economic Journal, described it as ‘a book which, we venture to
think, will take its place among the permanent, as distinguished from
the merely ephemeral, products of British economic inquiry’.85
Clearly Bastable’s contribution to both the areas of international
trade theory and public finance were substantial and were judged to
be so by both contemporaries and successors.
A distinguishing characteristic of the early Whately Professors,
apart from Cairnes, was their abiding commitment to an inductivist
methodology in political economy. This was true of Longfield’s
approach to the subject, while his successor Isaac Butt generated a
vibrant scepticism with respect to the generality of economic
principles, in contrast to the view of many of his contemporaries.86
The same commitment to an inductive approach is clearly evident in
Lawson’s Five Lectures on Political Economy of 1843. Lawson was
critical of Senior’s efforts to reduce political economy to an
axiomatic basis consisting of four general propositions. Lawson
stressed the need for attending to facts with the utmost care and
attention, and only then subjecting them to careful theoretical
interpretation. The early Whately Professors did not, individually or
as a group, call into question the validity of the deductive method in
political economy. The ‘Ricardian vice’ had taken too firm a
methodological hold on political economy for that to occur. Their
methodological position was that empirically-observed facts should
provide the basis for deductive reasoning in political economy, a
position which was later in the century given a methodological
imprimatur in J.N.Keynes’s The Scope and Method of Political
Economy of 1891. The exception among the Whately Professors to
an inductivist position was, of course, Cairnes, who produced the
most rigorous exposition of the deductive method in political
economy written in the nineteenth century. This was Cairnes’s The
Character and Logical Method of Political Economy of 1857, which
was based on a course of lectures originally delivered in Trinity
College Dublin.87 This work remained for a uniquely long period the
most authoritative statement on methodology in political economy.
The methodological bias towards the inductive approach of the
Whately Professors had, arguably, two important consequences for
political economy in Ireland. The first was their propensity to conduct
investigations in applied or practical areas of economics. This is
reflected in the work of several Whately Professors, most notably
that of Longfield, Hancock, and Houston; while Donnell
concentrated practically all his efforts on applied issues. This, it has
been suggested, may have been due to factors other than their
methodological position, not least being the economic and social
circumstances of nineteenth-century Ireland, which made such
studies an obvious, even a compelling duty for professors of political
economy to undertake. In addition, the fact that all of the Whately
Professors were lawyers by training, and most of them by profession,
provided the requisite educational background to address the most
pressing issue of the period, the Irish land question, which clearly
had both legal and economic dimensions.88 A second consequence
was the extent to which the commitment of the early Whately
Professors to an inductive approach influenced colleagues and
graduates in Trinity. Two distinguished Trinity graduates in
particular must be mentioned, Cliffe Leslie and Ingram. Both were
major figures in the English-speaking world as pioneers of the
historical school of political economy. They were major critics of the
classical method of deduction and stressed the absolute necessity of
an inductive approach to the study of economic issues, which in their
view could never be separated from the larger social matrix of
relations.
3
POLITICAL ECONOMY AT THE
QUEEN’S COLLEGES IN IRELAND
(Belfast, Cork, Galway), 1845–1900
After the establishment of the Whately Chair in 1832 at Trinity
College Dublin, the most important contribution to the teaching of
political economy in Ireland was the foundation of the Queen’s
Colleges in 1845. Each of the three colleges, at Belfast, Cork, and
Galway, had from the outset a chair of Jurisprudence and Political
Economy. The founding of the colleges was followed five years later
by the establishment of their degreegranting institution, the Queen’s
University. The decision to establish the Queen’s Colleges at this
time was not an isolated event. It was in fact an integral part of a new
policy of conciliation, implemented by Peel in 1843, to counteract
Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for repeal of the union between Great
Britain and Ireland. The problem which Peel sought to solve by the
establishment of the Queen’s Colleges, the inadequate provision of
higher education in Irelahd, had a long history and involved not only
questions of education but also of religion, politics, and economics.
It was a source of profound periodic disturbance in Irish public
debate as it was in Anglo-Irish relations throughout the nineteenth
century. To understand the particular circumstances surrounding the
establishment of the Queen’s Colleges and their subsequent
development warrants an examination, albeit brief, of the troubled
and protracted history of university education in Ireland.
The university question in Ireland emerged in the last quarter of
the eighteenth century. At this time the only university institution in
Ireland was the University of Dublin, centred on its single
constituent college, Trinity College, which had been established ‘for
the education…of youths…that they may be better assisted in the
study of the liberal arts and in the cultivation of virtue and religion’.1
The role of Trinity College was to provide a supply of clergy to the
established church. Its members comprised the bulk of the landed
aristocracy and the professions, and they were unquestionably
44 THE QUEEN’S COLLEGES, IRELAND, 1845–1900
dominant socially and politically throughout the nineteenth century.
Trinity College was overwhelmingly Anglican and its provost and
fellows had to be of that faith. In addition, with the accession of
Charles I, students were required to attend Anglican services and all
candidates aspiring to degrees had to take the Oath of Supremacy,
along with a number of other anti-Catholic declarations. Admission
to the college was never formally denied to either Catholics or
Protestant dissenters, but they were, in effect, legally excluded.
During the course of the 1780s, public debate in Ireland about the
university question centred on a number of possible solutions which
were put forward for consideration. These included: the ‘opening’ of
Trinity College to Catholics and Protestant dissenters, by the
abolition of religious tests; the establishment of a new college or
colleges within the University of Dublin; and the foundation of new
university institutions independent of the existing university. In the
event, nothing was to emerge from the deliberations of the 1780s.
However, in the following decade, under the impetus of external
events, a number of important developments were to take place.
The external events included the French Revolution and the
ensuing war between Great Britain and the new revolutionary
regime. One of the results of the French Revolution was the closing
down of the Irish Colleges in France and Flanders, which had been
the principal locations for the education of the Irish Catholic clergy.
With the closure of these colleges the Irish bishops regarded the
continued education of Irish clerical students on the Continent with
grave apprehension; they feared students would be exposed to the
prevailing revolutionary ideas. The government was equally anxious
to inhibit the importation of revolutionary notions into Ireland, so a
number of major concessions were made to Catholics. The first was
contained in a section of the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, which,
along with the letters patent granted to Trinity College the following
year, permitted Catholics legally to enter and graduate from Dublin
University. They were not entitled, however, to enter for fellowships,
professorships, scholarships, or prizes, which greatly devalued the
concession since few Catholic students were able to finance their way
through the degree course.2
While acknowledging the concession of ‘opening’ Trinity College
to Catholic laymen, the Catholic hierarchy did not view it as a
solution to the problem of educating the Catholic clergy. They
pressed for the establishment of a special seminary which would be,
for all practical purposes, under their exclusive control. The
POLITICAL ECONOMY AND COLONIAL IRELAND 45
government, for their own strategic reasons based primarily on their
desire to secure the services of the Catholic clergy in maintaining the
established order, granted permission for the foundation of a college
at Maynooth, to be supported by an annual grant from Parliament.3
Parliament imposed no restrictions on the admission of students,
other than that they should be Catholics, but the bishops did not
favour the admission of lay students, even though, for a short period
between 1810 and 1817, a lay college was maintained in addition to
the seminary. Maynooth became, within a short time, one of the most
powerful national institutions in Ireland.
The Protestant dissenters, who were mainly Presbyterian,
comprised of middle-class tenant farmers, businessmen,
industrialists, and shop-keepers concentrated geographically in
Ulster, were now motivated, as a result of the establishment of
Maynooth College, to demand a similar arrangement for the
education of their clergy. Traditionally, the Ulster Presbyterians had
maintained strong cultural links with Scotland, and many of their
clergy were educated there. Politically, however, they were out of
favour with the government of the day as a result of their espousal of
radical and republican principles and hence continued demands for a
second university in Ulster fell on unresponsive ears. A plan for a
more broadly-based university in Ulster, which was to be accessible
to all Protestant denominations, including Anglicans and dissenters,
and financed by a sum of £5,000 bequeathed by Lord Rokeby, a former
primate, was unequivocally rejected by Parliament in London in
1799. This, in effect, marked the end of an important decade in the
history of Irish university education, for the problem would not
receive any further serious attention, at Westminister at least, until
the 1840s.4
The intervening period, from the close of the eighteenth century to
the 1840s, was not marked by lack of activity with respect to higher
education in Ireland, north or south. In Ulster, the Presbyterians,
whose demands had been firmly rejected by Parliament, proceeded to
establish, in 1810, a college in Belfast which went a considerable
distance in satisfying their educational needs, the Belfast Academical
Institution. This resulted from the combined efforts of the local
commercial and industrial interests who were anxious to provide, in
Belfast, the focal point of Ulster and Irish Presbyterianism, a centre of
education at school and university level for both their clergy and
laity. The structure of the new Institution reflected these concerns,
and contained schools of English, French, mathematics, classics,
writing and drawing, as well as a faculty of arts, with professorships
in logic, mathematics, classics, belles-lettres, natural philosophy,
moral philosophy, Irish, Hebrew and oriental languages, and
divinity, and a medical faculty which was established later, in 1835.5
The Institution was, in effect, totally free from religious tests and was
founded on the principle that secular could be distinguished from
religious education and that students of whatever religious
denominations should receive their secular education in common.
The establishment of chairs of divinity was not incompatible with the
avowed secular stance of the Institution, since these professors were
appointed and financed by their respective churches and taught only
members of their own faith. For over thirty years the collegiate
department of the Institution went a considerable distance in solving
the practical difficulties of providing university education for Ulster
Presbyterians. But it suffered from two major difficulties: an
inadequate level of financial support from the state, and the
emergence of a sectarian controversy between orthodox and nonsubscribing Presbyterians. The first problem affected both faculties
of the Institution, but was less damaging than the second, which was
centred exclusively in the arts faculty. It was this latter problem
which finally led orthodox Presbyterians to sever their connections
with the Institution in 1844 when Sir Robert Peel, in July of that
year, announced in Parliament his intention to introduce legislation
on the Irish university question.
Meanwhile, in the south of Ireland the agitation for educational
reform, particularly for the Catholic laity, itensified during the 1840s
under the leadership of Thomas Wyse, MP.6 It was this agitation,
rather than events in Ulster, which finally provoked Peel into
addressing the question of university education in Ireland. Wyse,
who belonged to the Catholic upper class, was an enthusiastic
supporter of O’Connell in the struggle for Catholic emancipation.
When this emancipation was granted in 1829 he was one of the first
Catholics to enter the Westminster Parliament, having been elected
as a Liberal in the general election of 1830. He immediately
committed himself to achieving a number of major reforms in
Ireland, especially in the area of education. His plan for educational
reforms embraced all three levels, primary, secondary, and higher
education. By the end of 1830, Wyse had presented a scheme for a
national system of education in Ireland, which, though rejected,
exerted a decisive influence on the scheme introduced the following
year by Stanley, the Irish chief secretary, on behalf of Grey’s Whig
administration. In 1835 Wyse introduced his second education bill,
this time dealing with secondary and higher education. The
government of the day, under Lord Melbourne, appointed a select
committee, with Wyse as chairman. This committee reported in
1838, and in an impressive document, written by Wyse, they
provided the government with a detailed blueprint for the future of
Irish education.7 The Report envisaged five different levels: an
elementary school level based on the parish; a secondary school, or
academy system at the county level; agricultural and professional
schools; four provincial colleges; and the provision for additional or
‘supplementary’ education, which would be supplied through the
work of literary and scientific societies, mechanics’ institutes, and
libraries.
These last institutions were later to play an important role in the
popular dissemination of political economy, throughout the remainder
of the nineteenth century.8 The different levels envisaged in the
Wyse proposals were to be under the direction of a board of national
education. A central concern of the proposed scheme was the
emphasis on the provision of education for the middle classes. This
argument was predicated on the premise that the upper classes were
catered for by the University of Dublin, that the lower classes had
available, by this time, the state-financed national school scheme, but
that the middle classes were largely neglected by the state. It was to
rectify this deficiency that the Wyse committee proposed the
establishment of county secondary schools or academies, particularly
the provincial colleges.
The publication of the Wyse committee’s report gave rise to
considerable agitation in Munster for a college along the lines
suggested in the report. This agitation was led by Wyse himself, with
the assistance of another member of the Wyse committee, William
Smith O’Brien, MP. A Munster college committee was formed in
Cork in September 1838, and later Limerick was also involved in the
agitation. Between 1838 and 1840 considerable pressure was brought
to bear on the government of the day, but by this time the
administration of Lord Melbourne was in retreat, and the Munster
college movement was a spent force by the time Parliament was
dissolved in June 1841. But despite the government’s overall lack of
response to the Wyse committee’s report, its recommendations
provided the basis for educational reform throughout the nineteenth
century, with its principle of mixed or united education, its advocacy
of hierarchical structure, and its emphasis on providing an integrated
structure of education for the whole country.9 The establishment of
the Queen’s Colleges was also to justify his proposals that the
educational problem required an integrated approach, as the college
scheme was greatly hindered by the lack of a secondary system
which was not introduced until 1878. This, however, was in the
future and the decision to establish the Queen’s Colleges was yet to
be negotiated.
The major problem which faced Peel’s administration in 1845 was
the higher education of the Catholic laity in Ireland. By this time
Wyse’s long campaign for educational reform, particularly university
reform, had convinced Peel that government action was necessary
and that Wyse’s scheme of provincial colleges based on the principle
of mixed education was attractive. Peel’s motivation in pursuing
educational reform was, among other things, based on his belief that
‘mere force, however necessary the application of it, will do nothing
as a permanent remedy for the social evils of Ireland’.10 He feared in
particular that he would lose the support of the middle and upper
classes among the Roman Catholics, and he wished to retain their
loyalty, at what some members of his administration regarded as too
high a price.11 This was certainly the view of De Gray, Peel’s lord
lieutenant in Ireland, who disagreed fundamentally with his prime
minister’s views. De Gray was removed from office in July 1844 and
replaced by Heytesbury, who shared Peel’s approach to Irish policy.
The same year Peel embarked on his policy of concilation for
Ireland, with a view ‘of weaning from repeal the great body of
wealthy and intelligent Roman Catholics by the steady manifestation
of a desire to act with impartiality and to do that which is just’.12
Specifically the policy of conciliation consisted of three measures,
implemented over the next few years, which included the
establishment of the Queen’s Colleges and later the Queen’s
University.13 The first, enacted in 1844, was the foundation of a
board of charitable bequests, which effectively replaced an almost
exclusively Protestant body which had been established in 1800. The
structure of the new board was to consist of thirteen commissioners,
five of whom were to be Roman Catholics. Reaction to this measure
was very unfavourable, with the Catholic hierarchy, led by Dr
MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam in Galway, strenuously opposed to
the measure. Eventually three bishops consented to act, and the board
came into operation in August 1844. Both Peel and Heytesbury
regarded this as a substantial victory for the process of conciliation.
The second measure in Peel’s policy of conciliation was to
increase substantially the financial grant to Maynooth College, which
was in serious financial difficulties and for which the Catholic
bishops had privately appealed for help to the government. The
Maynooth Act of 1845 increased the annual grant from £9,000 to
£26,000 and decreed that this grant was to be drawn in future from the
consolidated fund, which meant that it was no longer necessary to
vote on it annually. In addition, a capital grant of £30,000 was
provided for the enlargement of the college.14 The act caused
considerable political furore in the course of its passage through
Parliament, leading to, among other things, Gladstone’s resignation
from the cabinet. In Ireland, the passing of the act, though popular,
evoked little by way of change in attitude to the government on the
part of the Catholic population, though arguably the act was most
effective in removing Maynooth as a source of friction in the Irish
university question for the rest of the century.
As the Maynooth grant was being debated, Peel and his home
secretary, Sir James Graham, were devising a scheme of immense
importance for the future of higher education in Ireland. This scheme
was to provide Ireland with a system of university education which
would be acceptable to all the major religious groups in the country,
Catholics, Presbyterians, and Anglicans. Initially, the possibility of
making Catholics eligible for scholarships in Trinity College, or of
founding new colleges in the University of Dublin, was investigated,
but was quickly abandoned given the hostility of the Anglican
Church in Ireland. Consequently, it was decided to leave Trinity
College untouched and to establish three new colleges, to be located
at Cork and Galway, intended mainly for Catholics, and at Belfast,
primarily for Presbyterians. The first reading of the bill to enact this
development was introduced by Graham on 9 May 1845. The second
reading was carried by a large majority on 30 May and, after a
number of amendments at the committee stage, the bill was passed in
the House of Commons on 10 July 1845. The bill passed through all
its stages without a division in the House of Lords, and received the
royal assent on 31 July as the Colleges (Ireland) Act.15
The act, Graham explained, was to improve the social conditions of
Ireland by providing the benefits of higher education, particularly to
‘the middle and higher classes of society’.16 The problem of
educational reform as perceived by the administration centred on the
fact that the legally-established religion was not that of the majority
of the people. A similar problem had been encountered and overcome
at the primary school level through the provision of a system of
national schools based on the principle of mixed secular education,
and separate religious instruction, for the children of all
denominations. The working of that system was deemed sufficiently
satisfactory, in the peculiar circumstances, to justify its extension into
higher education. In addition to this source of support for their scheme,
the administration pointed to the experience of the Scottish
universities, and to University College London. Therefore, the new
colleges, which were incorporated in December 1845, were to be
undenominational and free from all religious tests. In addition, they
were forbidden to use their endowments from public sources to fund
theological teaching. Private endowment for theological teaching on
a voluntary basis was permitted, however. As in the Scottish
universities, the new colleges were to be non-residential, and all
teaching in the colleges was to be conducted by professors. The
professors were to be appointed and dismissed by the crown.17 To
complete the scheme, the granting of university degrees to the
students of the colleges had to be considered. The 1845 Act did not in
fact address this issue, and considerable discussion ensued in an
attempt to find an acceptable solution.
The Queen’s Colleges scheme was completed in 1850 by the
establishment of a new university, the Queen’s University in Ireland.
After Peel and Graham had abandoned their idea of linking the new
colleges to the existing University of Dublin they looked to the
University of London as a suitable model, so that the new university
would be primarily an examining body with a number of affiliated
institutions. Under this arrangement, they envisaged students from
Maynooth competing with Presbyterians from Belfast and with
Catholics and Anglicans from Cork and Galway. Under the new
administration, now in office, the example of the autonomous
Scottish universities, was canvassed by the prime minister, Lord John
Russell. But Lord Clarendon, the Irish viceroy, argued against both
options as being unsuitable for Ireland. He considered that, if applied
to Ireland, the London University structure would lead to a lowering
of standards and would merely facilitate the Catholic hierarchy in their
demand for a Catholic university. Clarendon’s thinking prevailed,
and the Queen’s University was established within a federal structure
and designated as a teaching university in that only students educated
in one of its three colleges could obtain its degrees. The Queen’s
University was empowered to prescribe all courses for the award of
degrees and diplomas and to direct all examinations. It exercised a
powerful control over the colleges and maintained a high and
consistent standard of instruction.
Outside Parliament the passing of the Ireland (Colleges) Act
received a very mixed reception, extending from enthusiastic support
to relentless hostility. This scheme, which Peel intended as a measure
of conciliation, became a source of bitter controversy and contention.
It is virtually impossible to understand the history of the Queen’s
Colleges, their acceptability in Irish society, or their role in the
dissemination of certain disciplines, particularly political economy,
without an appreciation of the reactions of the different groups to the
founding of the colleges. In Britain, in contrast to the passing of the
Maynooth Act, the college scheme provoked little reaction. In Ireland
opinions differed sharply. Those who supported the principle of
mixed
education,
mainly
non-subscribing
Presbyterians,
enthusiastically supported the measure. Nationalist opinion was
divided. Representing one section, Daniel O’Connell condemned the
measure vehemently when he spoke of the ‘godless colleges’,
echoing the idiom of the militant Tory, Sir Robert Inglis, who had
earlier denounced the bill as ‘a gigantic scheme of godless
education’.18 In contrast, the Young Ireland movement welcomed the
colleges. They viewed them as promoting and facilitating two of
their most desired objectives, an educated and independent-minded
laity and union between Irishmen of different religions. The Catholic
hierarchy was also divided. One section, a minority, led by the
primate, Dr Murray of Dublin, was prepared to give the colleges a
fair chance. The other section, led by Archbishop MacHale of Tuam,
was utterly opposed to the scheme. It was under the influence of
MacHale that the hierarchy, withholding their outright condemnation
at the beginning, insisted that certain amendments be made to the
scheme if their co-operation was to be secured. These included: that a
fair proportion of the professors and other officers would be
Catholics and approved by the bishops; that all officers should be
appointed by a board of trustees, which should include the Catholic
prelates of the province, and should have the power to dismiss any
officer convicted of undermining the faith or morals of students; and
that Catholic chaplains should be appointed at suitable salaries to
supervise the religious and moral instruction of Catholic students.19
These demands would have effectively undermined the scheme of
mixed education, and were rejected by Peel. A protracted struggle
ensued between the hierarchy and the administration, which involved
missions to Rome by both sides. The hierarchy, under MacHale’s
leadership, triumphed and three papal rescripts in 1847, 1848, and
1850 (the latter coinciding with a national episcopal synod held in
Thurles), formally condemned the Queen’s Colleges, and warned the
laity to avoid the colleges as subversive to their faith and morals.20
Thereafter the hierarchy acted in unison against the colleges and set
about establishing a university of their own, which emerged in 1854
as the Catholic University, with John Henry Newman as its first
rector. The bishops’ hostility to the Queen’s Colleges had a blighting
effect on their development, particularly in Cork and Galway, and
these colleges, while far from being failures, nevertheless did not
succeed in realising their potential or the purpose of their foundation.
In Belfast the position was radically different, but even there the
creation of alternative institutions to the Queen’s College was not
avoided. The essential difference between Belfast and the rest of the
country was that the population from which potential university
students could be drawn was almost totally Protestant, and the
Presbyterian Church, which was comparable in influence to the
Catholic Church in the rest of the country, saw its way to co-operate
with the new Queen’s College in Belfast. However, the Presbyterian
general assembly, whose main concern was the education of its
clergy, did not present a totally unified front on the question.
Notwithstanding the establishment of a Presbyterian theological
college at Belfast in 1853, which worked in harmony with the
Queen’s college, a minority in the general assembly insisted on
establishing a completely independent college in Ulster to provide
instruction in arts and theology and to be totally under their control.
This they did in 1865 at Derry, with the help of a sizeable bequest
from a Mrs Magee, when they established a college named in her
honour.21 Queen’s College Belfast, in contrast to those at Cork and
Galway, and in the different circumstances of Ulster, was
immediately successful and shortly after its opening had as many
students as Cork and Galway combined. It was in these
circumstances that the Queen’s Colleges were launched. The next
fifty years were to prove just as turbulent as the years of their
launching, and the ‘Irish university question’ was to remain a
continuing source of grievance to Roman Catholics and an unsettling
issue for successive British administrations.
The structure of teaching within the Queen’s Colleges was centred
on the three major faculties of arts, law, and medicine. Of these, the
arts faculty was deemed the most important from the viewpoint of
providing a general education, in contrast with the professional
orientation of the law and medical faculties. Shortly after the passing
of the Queen’s Colleges Act in 1845 a board, consisting of the newlyappointed presidents and vice-presidents of the three colleges, was
appointed. Over the next four years, from 1846 to 1849, it was the
board, under the direction of the government, which grappled with
the problems of organisation, curricula, and appointments for the new
colleges. In their first documents, produced at the end of January
1846, the new board drew up a detailed course of studies in arts. The
arts course was to be of three years’ duration, with the academic year
consisting of three terms, each averaging three months in length.
According to its charter each college was allocated twelve
professorships, and these were divided equally between a department
of science which contained professorships in mathematics, natural
philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and zoology, botany and rural
economy, geology and physical geography, and a department of
literature consisting of chairs in Latin, Greek, English, German, and
cognate subjects, French and Italian, logic and mental philosophy. In
addition, the entrance requirements were specified and the course of
studies to be pursued in each year was also formulated. At this stage
no mention was made for the provision of political economy in the arts
faculty. In terms of the rigour of the entry requirements and the
extensiveness of the subjects included for study, the course differed
from most of the contemporary models available including those of
Trinity College Dublin, the Scottish universities, and Oxford and
Cambridge. It approximated most closely to the arrangement of
London University. One evaluator of the proposed course of studies
in arts summarised it as follows: ‘In general that scheme was most
closely akin to the London curriculum in its range of subjects and to
the Dublin arts course in its orderly sequence of studies: in all
respects it stood at the opposite extreme to the undergraduates of
Oxford and Cambridge…’.22
During the remainder of 1846 and into 1847 a number of events
conspired to interrupt the work of the board. These included a change
of administration in England, the continuing battle in Parliament over
the Corn Laws, and, in Ireland, the trauma of the Famine. However,
in October 1847 the board reassembled to revise their earlier work on
study courses and statutes and in addition to draft courses in law and
medicine. Several changes were introduced in the board’s work
during 1847–8. Firstly, the number of professorships was increased
from twelve to twenty for each college, of which thirteen were now
to be located in the faculty of arts, five in medicine, and two in law.
Secondly, a number of changes in the original professorial
arrangements were implemented. The chair of English became
history and English literature, the two modern language chairs were
replaced by one chair in modem languages and one in Celtic
languages, zoology and anatomy were amalgamated into a chair in
natural history, botany and rural economy were replaced by a chair in
agriculture, while geology and physical geography were reorganised
into a chair in minerology and geology. In addition a chair in civil
englineering was established within the faculty of arts.23 Thirdly, the
arts faculty was divided into a literary division and a scientific
division. The former contained the chairs of Greek, Latin, history and
English literature, modern languages, and Celtic languages, while the
latter included the chairs of natural philosophy, chemistry, natural
history, mathematics, logic and metaphysics, minerology and
geology, civil enginering, and agriculture. Finally, changes were
made in the number of subjects to be studied over the course of the
three years and it was under this revised plan that political economy
was included for the first time in the course of studies in the faculty of
arts.
The chair of political economy was located not in the faculty of
arts but in law. The board’s decision to locate political economy in
the faculty of law was largely influenced by the recommendations of
a committee of the House of Commons which had addressed the
issues of legal education.24 This committee had been established in
April 1846 and had reported by August of that year.25 The committee
commented on the fact that the charter of the Queen’s Colleges
envisaged the establishment of professorships of law, and pointed to
the opportunity that this afforded for the introduction of courses in
law, which the committee felt the existing universities had failed to
supply. However, the committee also felt that the demand for these
courses would perhaps be meagre, and consequently that the
professor of jurisprudence should also incorporate in his brief
responsibility for political economy. As a result, one of the two
chairs in the faculty of law was to be in jurisprudence and political
economy, the other in English law.
In the faculty of arts the principal courses prescribed were the
degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master in Arts, along with diplomas
in civil engineering and agriculture. Candidates for the BA were
required to attend lectures in one of the three colleges for a minimum
period of two full terms in each of the three sessions, had to pass the
requisite college examinations, and had to be recommended by the
president of the college to enter for the degree examination. The
three-year course consisted in the first year of English language,
classics, a modern language, and mathematics. The second year
courses included logic, chemistry, zoology, botany, and either classics
or higher mathematics. The final-year courses contained physics,
history and English literature, geography, and either metaphysics or
jurisprudence and political economy. After graduation, Bachelors in
Arts of the Queen’s University could proceed to the degree of MA by
examination in any one of the three groups of subjects: languages;
history, metaphysics and jurisprudence; and mathematics and
physical science. In the faculty of law the prescribed courses were
for the diploma in elementary law and the degree of Bachelor in
Laws. The diploma was a three-year course, in the first year of which
property, conveyancing, and jurisprudence were studied. In the
second year equity, bankruptcy, and civil law were covered, and in
the final year common and criminal law. On completion of this
course students were admitted to the diploma examinations.
If successful at the diploma, and having obtained the degree of BA,
students were entitled to proceed to the LL B examination, which
was taken after a further year of study in any one of the three
colleges. Likewise, Bachelors in Laws, after a period of three years,
could proceed to the degree of Doctor in Laws by examination.
It was within this organisational framework that political economy
evolved in the newly-established Queen’s Colleges, and this structure
remained largely intact during the course of the nineteenth century.
In Queen’s College Belfast, William Neilson Hancock was appointed
the first Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in 1849
while still Whately Professor at Trinity College Dublin, and retained
the post until 1853. The number of students taking jurisprudence and
political economy during Hancock’s term of office fluctuated from a
high of twelve during 1851–2 to a low of two in the academic year
1852–3. His prescribed reading for the academic year 1850–1
included Whately’s Lectures, Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Senior’s
Political Economy, and Burton’s Social and Political Economy.26 In
1853 Cliffe Leslie was appointed to the chair in succession to
Hancock, and held it until 1882. In the early years of Leslie’s term of
office political economy was clearly subservient within the
prescribed course structure to jurisprudence. This is evident from his
entry in the President’s Report for the academic year 1856–7:
The subjects which a course of lectures on Political Economy
must embrace are fewer and more definite than those classed
under the less advanced and more complicated science of
jurisprudence. It is the Professor’s endeavour to illustrate the
principles of Economic Science by the help of these
applications which will be most interesting and useful in a large
commercial town.27
That this was a view Leslie retained, can be seen from his various
contributions to the annual Presidential Reports, over most of his term
of office. After 1862–3 the number of students recorded as taking
political economy increased relative to previous years, and by 1871–
2 the extra work load which this entailed is reflected in the entry
under Political Economy in the President’s Report for that year:
The Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy (Mr
T.E.Cliffe Leslie) fills in reality two distinct and
important chairs, in the two distinct Faculties of Law and Arts.
As Professor of Jurisprudence, he lectures, teaches, and
examines in the general philosophy and history of law, in
Roman Law, and in Constitutional Law and International Law.
As Professor of Political Economy, he lectures, teaches, and
examines Arts Students in that great subject. His instruction in
Jurisprudence has the twofold purpose and result of teaching
legal philosophy and history, both as a branch of higher
University Education, and as a preparation for the legal
profession; and the duties of the Professor in this Department,
discharged as they are by Professor Leslie, would be
sufficiently arduous if he had not also to fill the Chair of
Political Economy, to which he devotes as much time and
labour as though he had not other collegiate duties. The stipend
and emoluments attached to this double chair are altogether
disproportionate to the abilities, attainments, and exertions it
demands on the part of the Professor.28
This was not a new theme as far as Leslie was concerned. As early as
1858, when Leslie provided evidence to the Queen’s Colleges
Commission29 of that year, he argued for substantial organisational
changes in the teaching of jurisprudence and political economy. His
principal recommendations to the Commission focused on the need
to reduce the volume of material to be provided by the Professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy.
Leslie’s objections to the work of the incumbent of this chair were
based on the following considerations:
1 The provision of a suitable course of instructions on such a wide
spectrum of subjects was not within the capacity of any one
professor, particularly as the ‘present emoluments of the Chair
were settled upon the supposition that its occupants would always
be a practising barrister’.30 This interesting observation would
perhaps largely account for the fact that all of the professors of
political economy in both the Queen’s Colleges and Trinity
College in the nineteenth century were graduates in law.
2 The course in law was oppressive and militated, in Leslie’s
view, against the law student. Civil law and colonial law were
particularly troublesome, as was the absence of adequate
textbooks on the general principles of jurisprudence.
3 The inclusion of Roman law as part of scientific jurisprudence,
however valuable for purposes of comprehensiveness in a
student’s legal education, was unlikely to be either ‘useful or
interesting’ to potential students of law at the Queen’s Colleges.
4 The present arrangement, in Leslie’s view, seriously impeded the
incumbent of the chair from devoting adequate time to
economical science, ‘which is capable of being so treated as to
prove a useful and profitable study, even in a commercial
respect, in such a town as Belfast’.31
Leslie’s recommendations, in the light of his foregoing criticism of
the existing arrangements, sought the omission of both civil and
colonial law from the course. In fact at an earlier stage in his
submission Leslie felt that jurisprudence in total should be
abandoned and that the duties and titles of the chair should be
confined to political economy. However, he later argued that the total
abandonment of ‘the original design, as far as jurisprudence is
concerned, would be for many reasons, to be deplored’, and settled
for a modification to the existing arrangements. His second main
recommendation concerned the course available in arts in the
Queen’s Colleges. These, he argued, were also excessive in the range
of subjects offered, and called for an alternative rearrangement of
subjects into more orderly and logical groups. Specifically he
recommended that political economy, logic, and metaphysics should
be located in the same group, since they belonged to the moral
sciences and in his view ‘Economic studies furnish the most rigorous
exercises in logical reasoning and the detection of fallacies’.
Associated with this recommendation was his call for the creation of
special degrees in mental and political sciences, along with special
diplomas for industrial knowledge.
This latter proposal had been canvassed by Leslie at some length
in earlier evidence to the Commission. Here Leslie argued the case
for what he called another ‘kind of education’ which was predicated
on the necessity of introducing the physical sciences into the
practical operations of life. In reply to a question before the
Commission as to the ‘subjects which you would comprise in your
commercial and mercantile education’, Leslie singled out as the
‘most necessary part of it’, instruction in the ‘Physical and
Mathematical Sciences’. He went on to cite the arrangements at the
Trade Institute of Berlin, which represented for him something of a
prototype model.32 Later Leslie developed this theme at more length
when he submitted a supplementary statement to the Commission
entitled ‘The Demand for Scientific Industrial Instruction in the
Queen’s College, Belfast’.33 in this contribution Leslie wished to
argue in defence of two propositions. Firstly, that there was a demand
for this kind of education which the Queen’s Colleges were not
supplying, and, secondly, that there existed ample evidence from
continental countries of the kind of institutions which represented
‘nearly complete models of the kind of additional instruction
wanted’. In defence of these propositions Leslie offered a number of
arguments, including his concern at the fact that not only the Queen’s
Colleges in Ireland but ‘Universities and Colleges generally
throughout the kingdom’ provided education primarily for the middle
classes, though there ‘was no proportionate increase in the aggregate
number of students’. This was, for Leslie, due to the fact that,
increasingly, the middle classes, and particularly the merchant and
commercial classes, perceived the poor remuneration from the
‘learned professions’ relative to the rewards from commercial
activities, for which the available education provided no particular
training. In addition to this line of argument, Leslie appealed to the
evidence of the productive superiority of the continental countries
relative to that of England, and cited at length the French example of
the creation of centralised schools for the training of civil engineers.
For Leslie all wealth was ‘the result of a knowledge of the laws of
nature, and that where this kind of knowledge is stationary, the
modes of production must remain unimproved’.34 In response to this
situation Leslie recommended the establishment of an industrial
school and outlined what he considered to be a suitable curriculum.
Political economy would be a significant part of that curriculum,
taking its place among such subjects as mathematics, descriptive
geometry, linear drawing, chemistry, experimental physics,
mechanics applied to arts, botany and modern languages. His defence
for the inclusion of political economy is an interesting account of
how, on the basis of a judicious selection of topics, it could be made
to serve the mercantile and commercial interests of society.
According to Leslie:
The importance of Economical Science, as a part of Industrial
Education, may not at once appear obvious, and it has been
overlooked in the Continental Institutions. It is sufficient, on
this head, to observe that a knowledge of the causes on which
the rate of profit, the present and future prices of labour, raw
materials, manufactures, and the precious metals depend, and
of the kinds of enterprises suited and unsuited to large
partnership and not joint-stock companies, together with an
acquaintance with the theories of banking, currency, the foreign
exchanges, and taxation, must be of immense value to the
heads or managers of factories and commercial establishments.
Many of the most disastrous failures in business have occurred
from an ignorance of the operation of those laws with which
the Economist must be conversant, and could not have occurred
under the direction of a person uniting this kind of knowledge
to the other requisite qualification.35
Arguably Leslie’s concerns with these issues of merging political
economy with the interests of commercial society must have been
largely influenced by his location in Belfast, which, at this time, was
the undisputed industrial capital of Ireland. Outside of the north-east
region of Ireland, centred on Belfast, economic activity was that of a
largely underdeveloped agrarian economy.
The concerns expressed by Leslie with respect to political
economy were not paralleled by the evidence available from the
other Queen’s Colleges at Cork and Galway. In Queen’s College
Cork, Richard Horner Mills was appointed Professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy in 1849, a position he held
until his death in 1893. The position of political economy within the
BA degree structure was similar in all of the Queen’s Colleges, with
political economy and jurisprudence constituting a third arts optional
course to metaphysics. In Cork and Galway the number of students
attending courses in law in general and jurisprudence and political
economy was particularly small compared with Queen’s College
Belfast. Apart from the opposition of the Catholic hierarchy to the
Queen’s Colleges, a more mundane set of reasons for this state of
affairs was advanced by the professors of jurisprudence and political
economy at both Cork and Galway in evidence to the Queen’s
Colleges Commission in 1858. Both acknowledged that
since candidates aspiring to the Bar had in any event to attend either
the Benchers’ own law school in Dublin or the law school in Trinity
College Dublin, the provision of legal education in the provincial
cities was of little use to them. Neither did the other branch of the
legal profession—the attorneys—appreciate the value of the law
faculties in the Queen’s Colleges. Consequently the only potential
clientele were the apprentices to attorneys who were located in Cork
or Galway, and even their attendance was not a necessary
requirement. Therefore, both professors argued that the small
numbers studying in their respective faculties was a function of the
number of attorneys practising in their respective cities. This
prompted Professor Mills to recommend to the Commissioners that
the law faculty in Queen’s College Cork should be abolished, but
that legal instruction should be retained on a more modest scale.36
D.C.Heron from Queen’s College Galway could not agree with this
suggestion, and expressed surprise at why either Belfast or Cork,
given their relative sizes compared with Galway, should have
experienced difficulty in acquiring students.37 Mills was also of the
opinion that political economy suffered greatly by virtue of its
association with jurisprudence, combined as they were in the one
chair. Indeed, part of his motivation for seeking the abolition of the
faculty of law would appear to be his concern to develop the teaching
of political economy. For Mills, ‘the time allotted to the study of
Political Economy is entirely too small for its due cultivation. It
appears to me to constitute one of the most important branches of
education.’38 Heron proposed, in the course of providing evidence to
the same Commission, a somewhat similar view to Cliffe Leslie in
Belfast, that a number of new diplomas should be established in
Galway, of which one should be a diploma of commerce. This was to
meet the educational needs, as Heron envisaged the plan in
operation, of the personnel from the various branch banks throughout
the country. But he quickly conceded that this suggestion ‘would be
more useful in Cork and Belfast than Galway—especially in Belfast,
because the system of banking is more extended in the North of
Ireland than in any other part of Ireland’.39 As suggested earlier, in
relation to Leslie’s envisaged role for political economy, the effects
of location were not inconsiderable in their influence on the place
and function of political economy in relation to the wider society.
The contents of the political economy courses as taught in
the Queen’s Colleges were broadly similar. In Galway, Heron’s
course in political economy consisted of a series of topics which
included history of political economy, elements of political
economy, taxation, capital, labour, pauperism, and colonisation. The
required reading material included Smith’s Wealth of Nations,
Senior’s Political Economy, Burton’s Political and Social Economy,
Heron’s Lectures on Taxation, and Bastiat’s Popular Fallacies.40 In
Queen’s College Cork, Mills’s course in political economy included
such topics as the nature and distribution of wealth; the principles
which regulate rents, profits and wages; the principles of commerce,
taxation, and the funding system; the principles of currency and
banking. The reading material for this course included Smith’s
Wealth of Nations, Senior’s Political Economy, Longfield’s Political
Economy, Longfield’s Lectures on Commerce, Huskisson’s
Questions Stated, and John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political
Economy.41 The course, as in the other Queen’s Colleges, consisted of
twenty-four lectures, which were delivered during the months of
December, February, and March of each session. By 1866–7 Mills
had added to the reading lists Fawcett’s Manual of Political
Economy, McCulloch’s Taxation and Funding, and Goschen’s
Foreign Exchanges, In the same year the reading material in Queen’s
College Galway centred on the work of Smith and John Stuart Mill,
and by 1871–2 this was extended to include Ricardo’s Principles of
Political Economy, Cairnes’s Logical Method of Political Economy,
Goschen’s Foreign Exchanges, and Price’s Currency.42 Over the
period from the 1840s to the turn of the century no major changes in
the position and status of political economy within the Queen’s
Colleges can be discerned. The changes that occurred were marginal;
substantial changes were not introduced until the early part of the
twentieth century.
In this chapter we have outlined the historical background to the
foundation of the Queen’s Colleges and traced in some detail the
difficulties which attended their inception and evolution. These
difficulties were to a large extent inevitable, given the complex
political and religious circumstances within which the Queen’s
Colleges were viewed as a pivotal instrument in the administration’s
negotiation of, and solution to, these very difficulties. To have
anticipated a successful outcome for the new colleges would have
been unduly optimistic. That the Queen’s Colleges never reached
their full potential, with possibly the exception of Queen’s College
Belfast, should come as no great surprise. Neither, however, could it
be argued that the Queen’s Colleges were a failure. From their
inception in 1849 they attracted very distinguished scholars, and, as
reflected in the evidence to the Queen’s Colleges Commission in
1885, their graduates compared very favourably with, and on
occasion surpassed, their counterparts from universities in Great
Britain. The Queen’s Colleges undoubtedly represented the
‘establishment view’ as far as the majority of the population was
concerned. Their foundation not only failed to solve Peel’s problem
of providing higher education for the Catholic majority, but in fact
stimulated the establishment of the Catholic University in 1854,
largely to counteract their influence.
The decision to establish a Catholic University emerged from the
National Synod of Thurles in 1850. Acting on the advice of Rome, it
decreed to found a Catholic university in Ireland. There were to be
five faculties: theology, law, medicine, philosophy and letters, and
science.43 The philosophy and letters faculty included as subjects
classical literature and languages, ancient and modern history and
geography, English literature, modern languages, logic, metaphysics,
ethics, Irish language, archaeology, and political economy.44 The fact
that political economy was on the syllabus marked an advance for
Catholic higher education. It was to take a further 130 years or so for
the first chair of economics to be established in Maynooth. But, in
fact, very little political economy appears to have been taught at the
Catholic University of Ireland. Indeed, its first rector, John Henry
Newman, discoursing before it on The Idea of a University, described
political economy as ‘a science at the same time dangerous and
leading to occasions of sin’.45 No doubt this secular science, with its
morals of the market-place, mocked spirituality, and propagated
values unbecoming a gentleman. It is potently symbolic that the old
Oxford friends, Newman and Whately, never met during the four years
in which Newman lived in Dublin.46
In October 1854 the provisional appointment of a ‘Lecturer in
Political Economy’ was announced.47 The following year the
appointee, John O’Hagan, was made professor of political
economy.48 In the Calendar of 1857 O’Hagan was still listed as
professor, but by 1869 there was no incumbent. From 1897 to 1900
W.P.Coyne was lecturer in political economy, and from 1900 to 1930
the Jesuit T.A.Finlay was professor of political economy at what had
become in 1908, University College Dublin, a constituent college of
the National University of Ireland, including the former Queen’s
Colleges of Cork and Galway. But the actual teaching of political
economy at the Catholic University seems to have been minimal.
O’Hagan pursued a successful legal career, becoming eventually a
Justice of the High Court. It is possible that occasional series of
lectures were delivered in the university by guest lecturers. Frank
Hugh O’Donnell, for instance, a former student of Cairnes at Galway
and later to become a Parnellite MP, delivered a series of three
lectures, ‘On economic science’ to the Catholic University.49
In November 1873, A Memorial Addressed by the Students and ExStudents of the Catholic University of Ireland to the Episcopal Board
of the University was published. Inter alia, it regretted the neglect of
the teaching of science, the lack of a proper scientific library and also
of exhibitions and prizes in science. There was, the Memorial
claimed, too much emphasis on classics, whereas the ‘distinguishing
mark of this age is its ardor for science’. The bishops were informed
that the ‘absence of Political Economy from the course of studies in
the University’ had ‘excited many unfavourable comments’.50 One of
the signatories, William Dillon, a son of the MP John Blake Dillon,
was later to write a Ruskinian critique of political economy, called
The Dismal Science (1882).
Viewed from the narrower institutional perspective of providing
instruction in political economy, the Queen’s Colleges were greatly
impeded, as the discussion earlier in this chapter demonstrates, as a
result of combining political economy with jurisprudence. This
development, together with the explicit assumption that the holder of
the chair would be a practising barrister, acted as a major constraint
on the expansion of instruction in political economy within the
Queen’s Colleges. This contrasted with the Whately Chair in
political economy at Trinity College Dublin, where no corresponding
constraints operated. On the other hand there was considerable
mobility between the holders of the Whately Chair at Trinity College
Dublin, and the chairs of Jurisprudence and Political Economy at the
Queen’s Colleges. Hancock, Cairnes, and Bastable held chairs in
both institutions at various stages in their careers. In addition, most
of the incumbents of the chairs in the Queen’s Colleges were
graduates of Trinity College. This mobility ensured at least a certain
homogeneity in course content and reading material within political
economy between the two universities, but it also arguably
contributed to the widely-held view on the part of the Catholic
majority that political economy was primarily the intellectual preserve
of the ‘establishment’ class, a view that was to evoke a hostile
indigenous response from different sources in Ireland during the
course of the troubled nineteenth century.
4
EASY LESSONS ON MONEY MATTERS
Political economy in the national schools
The dissemination of political economy in Ireland during the
nineteenth century was not entrusted solely to the formal institutions
of higher education such as the universities. At the other end of the
educational spectrum, the elementary school system was, after the
establishment of the Board of National Education in 1831, to become
the unlikely location of one of the most elaborate experiments in the
spreading of political economy among the ‘lower classes’, first of
Ireland and later of Great Britain and its other colonies. This
development was launched by Archbishop Richard Whately, whose
formidable presence as the effective chairman of the National Board
after 1832 provided him with an ideal platform. More specifically,
the national system of education, under the control of the National
Board, facilitated the introduction of Whately’s Easy Lessons on
Money Matters: For the Use of Young People (based on his Oxford
Introductory Lectures on Political Economy) into the curriculum.
The Third Book of Lessons and the Fourth Book of Lessons, which
were prescribed reading for the pupils, contained the first four and
the last six sections respectively of Easy Lessons. As a result Whately
became ‘for a time…nothing less than the head schoolmaster of the
Irish people’.1
A comprehensive examination of the philosophical basis of
Whately’s commitment to political economy is beyond the scope of
this chapter. Nevertheless, for Whately political economy was
neither a fortuitous choice of subject nor did it operate within an
intellectual vacuum. On the contrary, it emerged from a theological
and philosophical framework more cohesive than has been
acknowledged by historians of ideas.2 It is, for instance, only against
the background of this larger framework that it can be demonstrated
that Whately’s political economy was designed to show that
inequality was a ‘natural’ state of society and was, in fact, the basis
for the organisation of efficient human communities based on the
principle of the division of labour. Similarly, it is only from the
perspective of his overall ideological framework that his concern
with university and popular education can be adequately
comprehended. His aim was to uphold on the social level the
inequalities which it was no longer possible to maintain at the
political level by the use of repressive legislation or physical
coercion.3 For Whately, increasing industrial and urban concentration
was conducive to increasing the capacity of the masses to reflect
critically on their political and social status. Confronted with this
situation the ‘higher classes’ needed to reestablish their intellectual
hegemony, to become the ‘proprietors’ of the educational system.
The question for Whately, as he pointed out in a sermon delivered in
1830, was not whether the working classes should or should not be
educated, but by whom and for what purposes.4 Whately felt that the
educational system was in danger of falling into the hands of middleclass radicals who would quickly replace the ‘higher orders’ within
British society. Whately was motivated by his desire to recapture the
educational system through the promotion of the teaching of science,
including political economy, and through the use of the universities
in performing the critical function of ‘ideological supervision’ within
society.5 while the extension of popular education was to recolonise
and reshape the intellectual landscape of the masses.
By the early 1830s, when Whately arrived in Ireland, the process of
popularising political economy was well established in Great Britain.
The principal social groups at which these efforts were directed
included the adult working classes for whom, according to the
Scottish political economist J.R.McCulloch, instruction in the
economic principles ‘that must determine their condition in life’ was
absolutely imperative, as well as those of school-going age.6 A
number of powerful intellectual and religious currents of thought
combined in identifying the newly established science of political
economy as . an essential instrument of social reform. At this time
the prestige of the physical sciences was such that it was confidently
assumed that their methodology could be applied to other branches
of learning where it would be equally productive of exact and
universal laws, especially in the elucidation and explanation of social
phenomena. Political economy, as a newly emergent science, was
clearly viewed in these terms and did not disappoint, by producing an
array of ‘natural laws’ through the work of Smith, Ricardo, and
Malthus. A textbook published in Edinburgh, itself a centre for the
POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE NATIONAL SCHOOLS 67
popularisation of political economy because of the pioneering efforts
of McCulloch, spoke of political economy as providing ‘an
explanation of the operation of certain natural laws …a knowledge of
which is of the greatest importance and utility’.7 Viewed from this
perspective, political economy was an indispensable source of social
enlightenment, and the need to instruct the mass of the population in
its principles became a social imperative. The Westminster Review, in
1825, described, with no apparent irony, the evangelical mission of
political economy:
The principal difficulty is overcome—the road to happiness is
discovered—no groping, no perplexing research, no hopeless,
thankless toil is required—all that remains to be done is, to
remove the obstacles which conceal that road from the view of
those who are less fortunate than ourselves.8
This secular gospel received powerful religious support from Thomas
Chalmers and Whately, who argued that orthodox economic
doctrines were compatible with Christian belief.9 An intellectual
discipline which combined the apparently universal and
incontrovertible authority of physical law with the moral prestige of
Christianity was twice-blessed. It became the sovereign social
discourse in the nineteenth century and was assured a central role in
education reform.
As the nineteenth century progressed, a third justification for a
popular education where political economy played a pivotal role was
provided by what might be called the ideology of social control or
social containment.10 Increasingly educationalists and leaders of
public opinion came to perceive education as a crucial instrument for
avoiding social strife and facilitating the peaceful transition to an
industrial and urbanised society. The educational movements of the
nineteenth century have been described as ‘a battle of ideas…on
which the future of society, of capitalism itself, seemed to depend’.11
Other commentators have argued that ‘in the 1830s and later…it was
the education-as-insurance, rescuing-from-revolution, schools-ratherthan-prisons that was the most representative’.12 A variation on this
theme, albeit more restrained in tone, has been put forward by
Harrison who has argued that ‘the development of a literate section
of the working classes opened the way to the spread of radical and
unorthodox opinions, and a good deal of adult educational effort
stemmed from the middle-class desire to check this’.13 This was the
central ideological position of leading Whig spokesmen of the time,
whose commitment was to a philosophy of gradualist adjustment to
rapidly-changing social circumstances. These spokesmen shared with
radicals a vigorous commitment to popular education, and
particularly political economy, not as an instrument of social
critique, but as the blueprint of a correct code of ideas to contain the
aspirations of the emerging working class.
The work of popularising political economy, which, it has been
argued, ‘was, with the fierce debate which accompanied the
publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, perhaps the most deeply
contested development in nineteenth century intellectual history’,14
proceeded apace during the first half of the century. This task was
undertaken by two distinct groups. The first consisted of ‘economists
of the second rank’15 who were active in the educational field, such
as J.R.McCulloch and James Mill. The second consisted of a group
of individual writers who undertook the task of translating the
complexities of the ‘natural laws’ of political economy into a form
suitable for intellectual digestion by schoolchildren.16 One of the
most celebrated examples of the latter genre was Mrs Marcet’s
Conversations on Political Economy in which the essentials of the
discipline were explained in a manner suitable for the edification of
the young. Originally published in 1816, it was reprinted five times
by 1824. Other works in this tradition included J.MacVickar’s First
Lessons in Political Economy for the Use of Elementary Schools,
which was based on the alleged axiom that the ‘first principles of
Political Economy are mere truisms which children might well
understand, and which they ought to be taught’.17 Harriet Martineau,
influenced by Marcet’s book, wrote her political economy series
between 1832 and 1834 using the familiar pedagogical device of
relating tales to provide moral, religious, and economic lessons. By
the 1830s the tradition of popularising political economy for both
adults and schoolchildren was well established in Britain.18 It is
ironic that the person who was to exert the most profound influence
in the popular dissemination of political economy, Richard Whately,
did so not from his influential chair in that subject at Oxford, but
from his archiepiscopal seat in Dublin, to which he was appointed in
1831.
Whately’s arrival in Ireland coincided with the introduction of
what was to be a major experiment in a state-supported system of
non-denominational ‘national’ education.19 Forty years were to
elapse before a similar system was established in Britain. Whately
was appointed a commissioner of national education and he became
the de facto chairman of the Board. While this of itself was
immensely significant, the administrative structure of the new system
greatly facilitated Whately in exerting a profound influence.
Administratively, the Irish national system of education ‘assumed
not the shape of the traditional bureaucratic pyramid, but of a
misshapen hourglass’.20 At the lower level the local people, mainly
clerics, organised the routine management of the schools. At the
highest level the commissioners of national education formulated
policy and took the major administrative decisions, Between these two
levels there existed only a thinly-dispersed inspectorate, along with a
small complement of civil servants. Consequently the commissioners,
of whom Whately was undoubtedly the most important, exerted a
major direct influence on the local schools. They dictated activities
within the schools, since they possessed the power to direct
government financial aid only to those schools which adhered to
their regulations. In addition, they produced a set of textbooks at a
reduced price for the schools, the prototype for similar experiments
in Britain.21
The rationale for establishing the national system of education, the
principles on which it was managed, and the organisational structure
adopted were influenced by three major considerations: the changed
political circumstances of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, the need to secure the agreement of the major religious
denominations in Ireland, and the contribution of key individuals at
crucial stages in the educational debate. Politically the central
consideration in the late eighteenth century was undoubtedly the
perceived threat of radical ideas emerging from the French
Revolution. For different reasons the British administration and the
Irish Catholic Church were apprehensive that these ideas might
foment large-scale popular unrest in Ireland. Just as the
administration had met the demands of the Catholic hierarchy to
establish a national seminary at Maynooth in 1795, so a similar
ideological accommodation was required if the lower classes were to
be protected from the influences of revolutionary propaganda. In
short, the successful implementation of any scheme of popular
education required the support of the Catholic hierarchy.22
With the exception of that strenuous critic of British policy in
Ireland, John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, the co-operation of the
Catholic hierarchy was forthcoming for a number of reasons.23 This
agreement was secured notwithstanding the fact that the new system
of national education was to be state financed and nondenominational in character. At first sight this may appear
paradoxical coming from the Catholic hierarchy who had
traditionally insisted on a denominational education system under the
control of their clergy. This anomalous behaviour is, however,
readily comprehensible viewed from the perspective of the forms of
mass education available up to the 1830s.
The first, dating from the 1530s, resulted in the establishment of
formal educational systems consisting of parish, diocesan, royal, and
later charter schools. The second centred on the activities of the
proselytising societies of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. The development of the formal schooling system
correlated closely with the sequence of systematic colonisations
which commenced in the sixteenth century. In the area of Irish
educational policy the state pursued an active policy of intervention
long before the nineteenth century, and at a much earlier date than in
Britain.24 The use of public education became an integral part of the
state’s ideological armoury to achieve cohesion and impose political
and social control. It is against this tradition of extensive state
intervention in Irish education that the establishment of the national
system in 1831 must be viewed. It was the culmination of a
protracted process, albeit now on the basis of a non-denominational
charter.
The non-denominational character of the national system was to
undermine what had been the second major historical line of
development in Irish education—Protestant voluntary education
societies committed to proselytisation. While largely unsuccessful in
their primary objective, they served the critical if unintended function
of stimulating and later consolidating Catholic opinion, both lay and
clerical, in seeking and supporting a state-financed nondenominational system of education. They thereby contributed in a
crucial way to the incorporation of Catholic opinion into
the emerging consensus on education that was evident by the end of
the 1820s. The institutional expression of this consensus was the
national system of education, under the control of the National Board
which was comprised of the powerful and influential commissioners
of national education. The Catholic hierarchy supported the new
system, not because it was ideal from its viewpoint, but because it
was less unpalatable than maintaining the status quo. In like fashion,
the hostility of the established and the Presbyterian Churches to the
national system was motivated by the perceived loss of their
hegemonic power in the educational arena.25
As with university education, the reactions of the various churches
to new developments in the elementary sector were of crucial
importance. The hope was that the national system would alleviate
sectarian divisions, principally between the established or Anglican
Church and the Roman Catholic and Presbyterian Churches. But in
the words of the leading historian of Irish education, these divisions
jeopardised the very operations of the national system itself, losing a
‘singular opportunity of binding the sectarian wounds of Irish
society’.26 The response of the established Church to the national
system of education was one of hostility. The majority of its bishops
and clergy expressed opposition to the new system, and in particular
to Whately’s involvement in it. This response can be largely
explained by political and ideological considerations. Politically the
established Church in Ireland was overwhelmingly dominated by
conservatives who had actively opposed Catholic emancipation and
disapproved of Whig reforms in general but in particular those
relating to tithe laws and church temporalities.27 Being a Whig
creation, the national system was, from the outset, treated with deep
suspicion. More fundamental than these considerations was the
opposition of the clergy of the established Church to the perceived
loss of their control over the educational system. A widely-held
belief among the clergy defended the right of the established Church
to maintain control over any system of education that the state might
provide. A less extreme version of this proposition argued that while
the state had the right to intervene in the education of Catholics and
Presbyterians, it had no such rights with respect to Anglicans.
Following the setting up of the national system, members of the
established Church campaigned against it, vigorously, both inside
and outside Parliament. The most important positive achievement of
the established Church was the creation of the Church Education
Society in 1839, to rival the national system. Under the direction of
Archbishop Beresford, and organised along diocesan lines, the
society at one stage of its operation had enrolments which exceeded
those of the national system.28 By the late 1850s, however, the
society was in serious financial trouble, and in 1860 Beresford publicly
recommended that the established Church schools be placed under
the control of the commissioners of national education.
In contrast to the established Church, the response of the Catholic
Church to the national system of education was one of general
support during the 1830s and 1840s.29 After 1850, however, this was
withdrawn and pressure for a Catholic denominational school system
intensified. Initially, however, the Catholic population was the major
source of strength for the national system. This resulted from the
positive disposition of a number of leading figures within the
Catholic hierarchy, especially Daniel Murray, the Archbishop of
Dublin, William Crolly, Bishop of Down and Connor, and James
Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. John MacHale, Archbishop
of Tuam, dissented from this view and from 1838 engaged in public
dispute with Murray. This dispute was eventually referred to Rome
for arbitration, but no definitive judgement was forthcoming. The
matter was therefore left to the discretion of individual bishops, who,
apart from MacHale, generally encouraged the Catholic schools in
their dioceses to join the national system. On the positive side, for
Catholics, the new system was preferable to the only alternative
available prior to 1831, government-financed Protestant Society
Schools. It was only after the Great Famine, when the political
influence of the Catholic Church was greatly enhanced under the
leadership of a new and less accommodating hierarchy, that the
demand for an alternative to mixed national education was articulated
and pursued. This alternative was to take the form of separate
Catholic denominational schools financed largely from government
funds.30
The initial Presbyterian response was similar to that of the
established Church; they too were extremely suspicious of the
national school system primarily because of its creation by a Whig
administration. They too were hostile to the idea of sharing control of
the education of their children with other denominations. In contrast
to the established Church they did not attempt to provide an
alternative schooling system of their own. They pursued what
amounted to a campaign of violence and intimidation which achieved
considerable concessions from the commissioners of national
education as early as 1840.31
It is against this background of the different denominational
responses to the national system of education that the complex web
of Whately’s relations to the various religious groupings must be
viewed. It explains why, within the established Church, Whately was
regarded with suspicion and even outright hostility for his
contribution to the work of the Board. Similarly, the response of the
Catholic hierarchy, especially in the 1830s and 1840s, to national
education helps to explain the extent to which Whately could work
with considerable ease and success with Daniel Murray. It has been
argued that the ‘Whately-Murray axis was the foundation stone of the
Irish national education system, and without their cordial
understanding it is possible that opposition Protestant forces would
have destroyed the system’.32 Throughout the period of his
involvement with the national system Whately remained committed
to the principle of non-denominational schooling, even when it
entailed the risk of estrangement from his co-religionists.
The reason for Whately’s commitment to a system of nondenominational education deserves further examination. His response
to the Dean and chapter of St Patrick’s, Dublin in January 1832
provides us with some insight into his thinking on this issue.33 What
separated Whately from most of his fellow clergy was his view that
the provision of education was essentially a civil responsibility which
should be administered by the government and not be dominated or
controlled by any one religious denomination. He returned to and
expanded on this theme later in the same year. He argued that while a
number of serious questions could be raised with respect to the
national system, it was still the best that could be devised in the
difficult Irish circumstances. Whately’s view that any solution to the
problem of popular education in Ireland had to be acceptable to the
major denominations, including the Catholic Church, alienated him
from most of his co-religionists.34
In the troubled sectarian circumstances of Ireland, Whately saw a
mixed education system as having a positive unifying role.
He returned to this theme on numerous occasions. In conversation
with Nassau Senior, in the early 1850s, he argued that the
educational system ‘prevents the diffusion of an amount of
superstition, bigotry, intolerance, and religious animosity’.35 Whately
actively opposed any system of education which would allow the
schools to act as denominational institutions, and in the 1840s, when
a Tory government considered the adoption of a denominational
system, he threatened to resign as commissioner.36 But Whately’s
commitment to the success of the Irish national education system was
also influenced by religious considerations. He believed that
Catholicism, in contrast to Protestantism, was irrational and that
mass education would effectively subvert its potent superstitions. He
also subscribed to the view that the reading of Scripture in the
schools would undermine the dogmatic influence of the Catholic
Church. This was ironic, as the scriptural extracts chosen by Whately
for use in the schools had been approved by Archbishop Murray.
Both agreed on the principle of using such extracts, but differed in
their estimation of the likely effects.37 Despite the theological
differences between them, Whately was convinced that the schools
should impart the rudiments of elementary morality which, he
believed, were common to both religions. On this issue, as on others,
Whately was negotiating the difficult terrain of extracting from
scriptural sources the elements of a moral instruction which offended
neither Catholic nor Protestant. The syntax and vocabulary of this
moral language were, of necessity, scriptural, thereby risking the
charge of proselytisation. Consequently, the search for a secular
language for moral and ideological instruction was of immense
significance in the circumstances of the sectarian divisions and
tensions in Ireland. Whately’s response to this challenge was to prove
extremely effective, enabling him to exert enormous influence on
popular education not only in Ireland but also in Britain. This he did
through his extraordinarily deep and extensive involvement in the
provision of school textbooks, as author, editor, ubiquitous reviser, as
influential policy-maker and as administrator of the system which
published, distributed, and, through its inspectorate, supervised the
use of these books.
The commissioners published a series of textbooks, each volume of
which was designed to provide material for a year’s instruction. In
addition, a number of supplementary volumes, on more advanced
topics, were also produced. A major distinguish ing characteristic of
these textbooks, in contrast with the existing alternatives, was the
graduated nature of the course of instructions which they contained.
The use of these particular texts was not compulsory; school
managers could, with the approval of the commissioners, substitute
alternative texts, so long as these were deemed to be non-sectarian.38
The textbooks produced by the commissioners were quickly adopted
throughout the national school system, notwithstanding that teachers
were given this concession to choose alternatives.39
The high regard in which the Irish-produced textbooks were held
was reflected in the rapid expansion of demand for their use in
schools not only in Ireland but in a number of countries, including
England and Scotland. In response to these external demands the
commissioners felt it necessary, in 1836, to appoint agents in London
and Edinburgh to oversee the supply and sales of their textbooks.
During the 1850s the Irish textbooks were unquestionably the most
popular and widely-used set of schoolbooks, not only in Ireland but
in England and a number of other countries. In 1851 about 100,000
of these were sold on the English market.40 The popularity of the
Irish books provoked the anger of English publishers, and in 1849
Longman and John Murray wrote to Lord John Russell, charging
unfair competition on the part of the Irish commissioners of national
education. Invoking the principles of free trade, the English
publishers sought to curtail the Irish commissioners selling their
books directly to the British public or to British schools at reduced
prices. Their efforts were successful and, in November 1852, the
treasury withdrew this right.41 Notwithstanding this development,
Irish school-books had become, by the mid-nineteenth century, the
most extensively used and influential set of basic textbooks in the
history of popular education.
Whately’s contribution to the basic lesson-books began in 1844
when he produced a Sequel to Second Book of Lessons. This arose
from the fact that the movement from the second to the third books was
considered too difficult for most children to negotiate with ease. The
purpose of Whately’s Sequel was to ease this transition. Two years
later, Whately undertook a complete revision of the Third Book of
Lessons, originally written by William McDermott, and in the same
year he also produced a Supplement to the Fourth Book. It might be
noted that Whately’s interest in pedagogic literature for children
dated back to a lengthy article of his in the London Review of 1829
on the ‘Juvenile Library’.42 Whately’s contributions to the textbooks
of the commissioners of national education were extensively used
until at least the mid-1860s in both Ireland and England.43 in these
books Whately adopted a high moral tone and, despite the apparently
rigid demarcation between the secular and the sacred, did not feel he
had transgressed either letter or spirit by including strategicallyplaced accounts of biblical history in ‘secular’ texts. Nevertheless, he
made every attempt to achieve a scrupulous neutrality in
interpretation with respect to the major religious denominations.
Notwithstanding the good intention of the authors, the inclusion of
moral and biblical anecdotes facilitated covert sectarianism, a charge
which was made with increasing frequency against the books of the
commissioners of national education. This was inevitable in that the
provision of a purely secular education, uncontaminated by religious
considerations, was unacceptable to the general ethos of the major
religious groups in Ireland. The dilemma was how to maintain a
strictly non-denominational system of education while, at the same
time, seeking to impart a denominationally-neutral form of religious
and moral instruction. The achievement of this aim was fraught with
danger. However, Whately enlisted the assistance of the most
powerful secular discourse of the nineteenth century, political
economy, a discipline claiming scientific neutrality while being both
overtly and covertly ideological.
Whately’s involvement in the popular teaching of political economy
came about through an initiative of the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge.44 In 1832 the Society set up a committee to
produce a series of publications for popular consumption. The
publications were, in general, consistent with the aims of the Society
in promulgating Christian principles, but were not exclusively
religious. Their initial aim was to produce publications for adults, but
soon they focused their attention on the provision of cheap textbooks
for schools. This concentration on school-books was largely
motivated by the perceived success of the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge, a rival organisation held in deep suspicion by
the major religious groups involved in education.45 in 1833 Whately
proposed to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge that a
text on political economy be produced for use in the schools. His
original proposal was that a simplified version of his Introductory
Lectures on Political Economy be published. The Society tentatively
agreed, insisting that extracts should first be published in the
Saturday Magazine. Satisfied with the reaction, the Society agreed
that the work should be published in book form, under the title Easy
Lessons on Money Matters: For the Use of Young People, as a
private venture on the part of their official publisher, Parker.46
Easy Lessons on Money Matters was from the outset a popular
text. Anthony Richard Blake, a Catholic commissioner of the Board
of National Education, told the Select Committee of the House of
Commons (17 August 1835) that the book was ‘valued very highly’,
and was ‘much sought for, not only at home but abroad’.47 By 1862
the English language edition reached its sixteenth impression.
Certainly Whately himself was pleased with its reception. By 1835
an Irish translation had been published and there was also a French
edition. Writing to Thomas Arnold in 1835, Whately pointed out that
Easy Lessons had even been translated into Maori and ‘proved Easy
Lessons highly acceptable to the natives’.48 While the response to the
book was very satisfactory, its audience was largely middle-class,
not the working-class as Whately had intended. ‘The lower orders’, he
wrote in 1833, ‘would not…be, as now, liable to the misleading of
every designing demagogue…if they were well grounded in the
outlines of the science, it would go further towards rendering them
provident, than any other scheme that could be devised’.49 Using his
very considerable influence as a commissioner he had Easy Lessons
incorporated into the Book of Lessons series. The original edition of
Easy Lessons was divided into ten sections, of which four were
included in the Third Book of Lessons and the remaining six in the
Fourth Book.
It was the inclusion of Easy Lessons in the lesson-books that
provided Whately with his most extensive readership. A Royal
Commission on primary education in 1851 established that in that
same year the commissioners sold approximately 300,000 of their
textbooks to Irish schools and disbursed another 100,000.50 Of this
total, almost 50,000 consisted of the advanced readers, namely the
Third, Fourth and Fifth lesson books.51 By 1865 almost 140,000 Irish
children were studying the Third and Fourth books.52 Whately’s
theories of political economy were reaching enormous numbers of
the school-going population in Ireland.
The success of the Irish textbook (with Whately as the
central figure) not only in Ireland but also in Britain, is a significant
example of the colonial periphery, its dependent status
notwithstanding, exerting influence over the metropolitan centre. By
the 1850s the Irish commissioners were supplying schools in more
than a dozen countries, including England and Scotland.53 In 1851
about 100,000 books were sold in the English market, and by 1859 this
number had trebled. On the basis of a conservative estimate,
Goldstrom claims that nearly one million Irish school-books were in
use in England in 1859.54 If we assume, at a minimum, that one-fifth
of this total comprised the Third and Fourth lesson books, then at
least 200,000 children, primarily from the working classes, were
nurtured in Whately’s theories of political economy.
Whately’s influence was not confined to either the direct use of Easy
Lessons or of the Third and Fourth lesson books. The immense
appeal of the Irish school-books ensured that they were widely
imitated. In 1840 the British and Foreign School Society produced its
first set of school-books containing non-religious material. Modelled
closely on the Irish originals, the contents of their Daily Lesson
Book, III, included ten lessons on political economy, a number of
which were made up of extracts from Whately. Later in the 1840s,
the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge reprinted the Irish
Fourth Book of Lessons which, of course, included the final six
sections of Whately’s Easy Lessons, and also decided to publish a
separate version of Whately’s text. In the 1850s the Society produced
its own readers which included extracts from Easy Lessons, while, in
the following decade, the National Society also produced its own
advanced readers which again included extracts from Whately. From
the 1830s to the 1880s, as Goldstrom observes, no school reader
published by religious societies concerned with popular education
was without its quota of Whately, either in direct form or indirectly
through adaptation.55 By 1860, it has been estimated, the Irish school
texts had about half the market in England, a fact commented on by
the Newcastle Commission on the state of popular education in
England which published its findings in 1861.56 This implies that
about one million Irish school-books were in use in England, with the
corollary that a further million texts were in circulation, many of
which contained extracts from Whately. From the 1830s to the
1860s, the numbers of Irish and English schoolchildren who
encountered the principles of political economy, whether directly or
indirectly, through Whately’s Easy Lessons, could be numbered not
in their thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, but in their
millions. It is difficult to dispute the conclusion that, in his time,
Whately was ‘the most widely published of economists’57 and, by
implication, perhaps, the most influential.
What, one might ask, did Whately attempt to teach his vast
audience of Irish (and other) schoolchildren? In what does Whatelian
political economy, as presented in Easy Lessons, consist? The first
four sections, which were produced in the Third Book of Lessons,
presented a brief and elementary exposition of the following topics:
money, exchange, commerce, and coin. In these early sections,
Whately attempted to seamlessly combine the positive and normative,
the apparently neutrally descriptive with the morally prescriptive. For
instance, having extolled the virtues of money as a medium of
exchange in facilitating the smooth operation of trade, Whately
quickly modulated to the moral and religious discursive mode:
We are cautioned in Scripture against the love of money. It is
indeed, a foolish and wicked thing to set your heart on money,
or on any thing in this present world…. But we ought. to be
thankful for all the good things which Providence gives us, and
to be careful to make a right use of them. The best use of
wealth, and what gives most delight to a true Christian, is to
relieve good people when they are in want.58
This was followed by an ingenious description of how money not
only facilitated exchange for goods and services, but also facilitated
the efficient administration of charity:
For this purpose, money is of the greatest use; for a poor man
may chance to be in want of something which I may not have to
spare. But if I give him money, he can get just what he wants
for that; whether bread, or clothes, or coals, or books.59
The lesson on ‘Exchange’ provided a simple account, in the tradition
of Adam Smith, of the division of labour and the advantages that
accrued from it. The lack of this practice ‘in some rude nations’ was
highlighted and the consequences starkly summarised: ‘Where
everyman does everything for himself, everything is badly done; and
a few hundreds of these savages will be half-starved, in a country
that would maintain as many thousands of us in much greater
comfort’.60 Lesson III on ‘Commerce’ extended the discussion of the
benefits of the division of labour and exchange to the international
domain, again in the Smithian tradition. The lesson ended with the
characteristic moral note:
What a folly it is, as well as a sin, for different nations to be
jealous of each other, and to go to war, instead of trading
together peaceably; by which both parties would be the richer
and the better off. But the best gifts of God are given in vain to
those who are perverse.61
The fourth lesson, on ‘Coin’, provided a simple and lucid account of
the characteristics which made coin, derived from precious metals,
acceptable as a medium of exchange.
The content of Lesson V and of subsequent lessons (all of which
were included in the more advanced Fourth Book of Lessons) was
more extended and the analysis considerably more sophisticated than
is the case in the earlier material. The first edition of the Fourth Book
contained six lessons, but this was increased to seven in later
editions. The topics dealt with included ‘Value’, ‘Wages’, ‘Rich and
Poor’, ‘Capital’, ‘Taxes’, ‘Letting and Hiring’, and, in later editions,
‘Interference With Men’s Dealings With Each Other’. These lessons
reveal the explicit ideological commitment to the defence of the status
quo and the maintenance of the existing social order. Extracts from
these lessons were reproduced extensively in other school readers,
and so reached a vast audience of schoolchildren in Ireland and
abroad. Lesson V, ‘On Value’, was one of the most interesting
sections in Easy Lessons and was, in itself, a convincing refutation of
Goldstrom’s view that this work is ‘a simple, orthodox exposition of
classical theories’.62 Whately clearly did not subscribe to the
conventional classical theories of value either in the ‘cost-ofproduction’ tradition of Adam Smith or in the ‘labour theory of value’
tradition of David Ricardo. Whately was concerned to establish the
determining factors of exchange value, which was value ‘in the
proper sense of that word; that, no one will give anything in
exchange for them; because he can have them without’.63 He
distinguished three contributing causes that conferred value on
products. The first, after alluding to the difference between value and
usefulness, was scarcity. ‘In some places’, Whately argued
water is scarce; and then people are glad to buy it… But water
is not more useful in those places where people are glad to buy
it, than it is here, where, by the bounty of Providence, it is
plentiful. It is the scarcity that gives it value. And where iron is
scarce, that is of great value.64
But scarcity was not sufficient to explain value on its own. The
product had to be desired: ‘scarcity alone, however, would not make
a thing valuable, if there were no reason why any one should desire
to possess it’.65 There was, finally, a third characteristic required to
complete the necessary and sufficient conditions to establish the
exchange value of a product: it had to be transferable. Whately stated
that
besides being desirable, and being scarce, there is one point
more required, for a thing to have value; or (in other words) to
be such, that something else may be had in exchange for it. It
must be something that you can part with to another person.66
This view of value was practically identical with that held by
Whately’s friend and predecessor at Oxford, Nassau Senior.67 It was
firmly based on a theory of supply and demand as the determinants
of value, and resembled, in structure, Alfred Marshall’s treatment of
the same topic later in the century.68
In the second part of the same lesson Whately refuted the labour
theory of value. The flavour of his reasoning is best conveyed in his
own words:
When anything that is desirable is to be had by labour, and is
not to be had without labour, of course we find men labouring
to obtain it; and things that are of very great value will usually
be found to have cost very great labour. This has led some
persons to suppose that it is the labour which has been
bestowed on anything that gives it value. But this is quite a
mistake. It is not the labour which anything has cost that causes
it to sell for a high price; but, on the contrary, it is its selling for
a high price that causes men to labour in procuring it.69
Whately had recourse to theology to explain what ‘causes men to
labour’. ‘It is not’, said Whately repeating his refutation of the labour
theory of value,
labour that makes things valuable, but their being valuable that
makes them worth labouring for. And God, having judged in
his wisdom that it is not good for man to be idle, has so
appointed things by his Providence, that few of the things that
are most desirable can be obtained without labour.70
In speculating, as historians of economic thought have done, on why
at Trinity College Dublin a ‘school’ of thought devoted to a
subjective theory of value, clearly at odds with the then predominant
classical theories, should emerge in the 1830s, one must necessarily
pay close attention to the doctrinal position of the founder of that
chair.71 Whately’s influence, whether directly or indirectly exercised,
on the education system was such that from the age of eight up to
university level, Irish students were left in no doubt about the
analytical and ideological errors of classical cost-of-production and,
more especially, the labour theories of value.
The determination of wages, dealt with at length in Lesson VI, was
an area of central concern for Whately. In these matters Whately
shared the general anxiety of his class generated by developments
during the 1820s and 1830s.72 His immediate aim was to establish
why some ‘labourers are paid higher than others’ and he established
early on in this lesson that ‘the rate of wages does not depend on the
hardness of the labour, but on the value of the work done’.73 On
what, asked Whately, ‘does the value of the work depend?’ His
answer was unequivocal: the value of each kind of work ‘is like the
value of anything else; it is greater or less, according to the limitation
of its supply; that is, the difficulty of procuring it’.74 The ‘limitation
of its supply’ was in turn influenced by three contributing factors.
Firstly, the costs of additional education acted as a barrier to entry,
which in turn restricted the supply, thereby leading to higher wages
for those occupations requiring extended education. Secondly, a
restricted supply of ‘natural genius’ in an occupation had the same
effect, Whately argued, of pushing up the wage-rate as in the case of
extended educational requirements. Finally, any ‘occupation that is
unhealthy, or dangerous, or disagreeable, is paid the higher on that
account; because people would not otherwise engage in it’.75 What
Whately provided here was a detailed but succinct account of the
supply-side of the labour market.
While allocating considerable space to considerations of factors
that influenced the wage-rate based on the supply-side, Whately was
emphatic that wage-rates were determined by the free interplay of
supply and demand, and vigorously defended this proposition. ‘The
best way’, he stated, was ‘to leave all labourers and employers, as well
as all other sellers and buyers, free, to ask and to offer what they
think fit; and to make their own bargain together, if they can agree,
or to break it off, if they cannot’.76 This followed (in part II of Lesson
VI) his defence of the proposition that fixing the wages of labour was
intrinsically harmful, claiming that, in general, ‘laws of this kind come
to nothing’. He also rejected the view that ‘the rising and falling of
wages depend on the price of provision’, a proposition which may
have appeared intuitively obvious to a young mind. But Whately
skilfully used the logic of market supply and demand to demonstrate
the ‘error’ of this line of reasoning.77 Whately bestowed no sympathy
on those labourers who ‘often suffer great hardships, from which
they might save themselves by looking forward beyond the present
day’. If when a man, insisted Whately,
is earning good wages, he spends all, as fast as he gets it, in
thoughtless intemperance, instead of laying by something
against hard times, he may afterwards have to suffer great want
when he is out of work, or when wages are lower. But then he
must not blame others for this, but his own improvidence.78
Closely related to Whately’s analysis of wage-determination was
Lesson XI entitled ‘Interference with Men’s Dealings with Each
Other’ which was not included in the original edition of Easy
Lessons. This lesson was, in effect, an attack on all kinds of
interference in the labour market on the part of government. ‘It may
be said’, Whately argued, ‘that more harm than good is likely to be
done, by almost any interference of Government with men’s money
transactions’.79 But his most vituperative criticism was directed at
trade unions, which for its intensity and unrelenting hostility deserves
quotation at length:
Most of the people of this kingdom reckon themselves
freemen, and boast of their liberty, and profess to be ready to
fight and to die, rather than submit to slavery. They look down
with pity and contempt on the Russian bond-men [or serfs] and
the negro-slaves, and on the subjects of the despotic
governments of Turkey or Persia. And yet many of these
people choose to subject themselves to a tyranny more arbitrary
and more cruel than that of the worst Government in the world.
They submit to be ruled by tyrants who do not allow them to
choose how they shall employ their time, or their skill, or their
strength. Their tyrants dictate to them what masters they shall
work for, what work they shall do, what machines they shall
use, and what wages they shall earn. Sometimes these tyrants
order them not to earn more than a certain amount; sometimes
not to earn less; and sometimes to refuse all work, and see their
families starve. They are heavily taxed for the support of their
tyrants; and if they disobey, they are punished without trial, by
cruel beatings, by having their limbs broken, or their eyes put
out with vitriol, and by death.
These unhappy persons are those who have anything to do
with Trades-Unions and Combinations.80
The remainder of this lesson was devoted to a more systematic
examination and critique of the behaviour of combinations, with
particular reference to the effects of strikes. Whately drew heavily on
Irish experience to highlight his central points and, at one stage, he
could be credited with discovering yet another theory for explaining
Ireland’s economic underdevelopment and social unrest: ‘In Ireland’,
Whately argued,
Combinations have driven away most of the manufacturers and
commerce: so that all the people are forced to seek
employment on the land. And as there is not land enough for
all, there is a continual struggle to obtain land and to keep it,
which often leads to outrages and murders.81
It is likely that Whately’s implacable hostility towards trade unions
owed a great deal to the influence of his friend, Nassau Senior.
According to Marian Bowley, ‘Senior looks to Whately for help with
questions of logic, and vice versa in regard to economic theory
proper’.82 Senior’s involvement with the issue of trade unions went
back to 1830, when he was asked by the Melbourne Government to
undertake an examination of the law on trade combinations and to
make proposals for reform. Senior was deeply disturbed by the
sometimes violent events which followed the repeal of the
Combination Laws in 1824: the strikes for higher wages, the
widespread riots, and the sporadic destruction of machinery which
paralysed a number of industries.83 The report which Senior (assisted
by Thomas Tomlinson) submitted to Lord Melbourne, in August
1832, contained ‘the most intolerant measures which, if they had
been enforced, and provided they had not provoked a revolution,
would have effectively hampered the Trade Union Movement’.84
The draconian measures85 urged against trade unions, their
members and supporters, proved politically unfeasible for the
Melbourne administration and Senior’s Report was, in effect,
ignored, which was a source of major disappointment to him.86
Notwithstanding its official reception, Senior’s Report contained
interesting material which he later included in the Report of the
Royal Commission on the Condition of the Hand-Loom Weavers
published in 1841.87 By 1841 Senior’s views on trade unions had
mellowed somewhat, his main concern now being with their
economic effects, especially on the mobility and freedom of labour.
But in the 1830–2 period he was clearly so alarmed by events that his
proposed stringent measures were, in his view, warranted; which, had
they been implemented, ‘would have undone the work of the
Philosophical Radicals in achieving the repeal of the Combination
Laws in 1824–5’.88 Notwithstanding this critical assessment, there is
no evidence that Senior ever advocated or desired a return to the
pre-1824 state of the Combination Laws. He later characterised the
old laws as demoralising, and argued that their administration had
been ‘partial and oppressive’.89 He later conceded his ‘limited
knowledge of the facts’ and his ‘incompetence to report fully on the
amendments necessary in the existing law’.90 it is also to Senior’s
credit that, on further consideration and in response to criticism, he was
prepared to abandon many of the original proposals. While in the
1832 Report he defended the state of common law concerning
combinations, he later insisted that modifications of that law were
‘required both by expediency and by justice’.91 Like most nineteenthcentury liberals, Senior felt that trade unions were inimical to the
freedom of the individual and he remained ideologically hostile to
them.92
Senior’s influence on Whately in Lesson XI of Easy Lessons is
clearly discernible. What the schoolchildren of Ireland and elsewhere
were exposed to in Easy Lessons was a deep-seated hostility to trade
combinations, which was not, in general, representative of the
response of the classical economists to the trade union movement,
nor did it reflect the part they played in the repeal of the Combination
Laws in 1824.93 whately’s stance on trade unions (as represented in
Easy Lessons) was far from being ‘a simple, orthodox exposition of
classical theories’,94 its dogmatism and unqualified ideological
hostility being uncharacteristic of classical political economy.
Whately’s views, unlike those of Senior, were never modified. It came
as some comfort, Whately mused, ‘to reflect that the people have it in
their own power to remedy the worst evils which they are liable to.
Whenever they come to understand their own true interests, they will
agree to resist all illegal combinations.’95 Properly taught, with the
aid of such a powerful instrument of ideological instruction as Easy
Lessons, future generations of Irish citizens could no doubt, in
Whately’s view, be relied on to identify correctly ‘their own true
interests’, thereby ensuring economic and social harmony.
It was in Lesson VII, entitled ‘Rich and Poor’ that Whately was,
arguably, at his most ingenious. It was logically appealing that this
lesson should follow on from the lesson on wages where Whately
had established the ‘laws’ of differential wage determination. In
Lesson VII the propertied classes were introduced. ‘Besides those’ the
lesson began ‘who work for their living, some at a higher rate, and
some at a lower, there are others who do not live on their labour at
all, but are rich enough to subsist on what they, or their fathers, have
laid up’.96 Lest the impression be given that life among the men of
property was one of agreeable idleness, it was quickly pointed out
that ‘many of these rich men…do hold laborious offices; as
magistrates, and members of parliament’; and that their motives were
most laudable in that ‘this is at their own choice. They do not labour
for their subsistence, but live on their property’.97
The introduction of this social class inevitably meant that the
questions as to how property was acquired and its rights established
would have to be addressed. This topic was introduced with the
salutary reminder that there ‘can be but few of such persons
compared with those who are obliged to work for their living’.98 The
analysis of the means of acquiring property followed Senior’s theory
of profits based on his celebrated theory of abstinence.99 ‘Young
people’, Whately promised,
who make good use of their time, and who are quick at
learning, and grow up industrious and steady, may, perhaps, be
able to earn more than enough for their support; and so have the
satisfaction of leaving some property to their children. And if
these again, should, instead of spending this property, increase
it by honest diligence, prudence, and frugality, they may, in time,
raise themselves to wealth.100
Such was the glittering prize that Whately offered his audience of
pauper children in nineteenth-century Ireland. Lest expectations be
unduly raised, that the diligent pursuit of Whately’s own
recommendations would result in widespread upward social
mobility, a cautionary note was sounded. ‘It is, of course’, Whately
warned, ‘not to be expected that many poor men should become rich;
nor ought any man to set his heart on being so’. But by way of
consolation ‘it is an allowable and a cheering thought, that no one is
shut out from the hope of bettering his condition’.101 The rights of
property and the security of property were justified by Whately
within a developmental perspective. Whately repeated on numerous
occasions throughout Easy Lessons that ‘in any country in which
property is secure, and the people industrious, the wealth of that
country will increase’.102 By inverting this argument, Whately
proposed a ‘theory’ of underdevelopment. It was the case
in some countries; where property is so ill-secured, that a man
is liable to have all his savings forced from him, or seized upon
at his death. And there all the people are miserably poor;
because no one thinks it worth his while to attempt saving
anything.103
The second part of Lesson VII addressed the crucial problem of
distribution within society. ‘Can it be supposed’, Whately asked, ‘that
the poor would be better off if all the property of the rich were taken
away and divided among the poor, and so allowed to become rich for
the future?’104 Whately was quite emphatic in his position on this
question. A number of lines of argument were brought forward to
sustain his verdict that, in these circumstances, the ‘poor would then
be much worse off than they are now’.105 The high point of his
argument was surely reached when, as a result of the hypothetical
redistributive process, the rich ‘would have become poor; but the
poor, instead of improving their condition, would be much worse off
than before. All would soon be as miserably poor as the most
destitute beggars are now. Indeed, so far worse, there would be
nobody to beg of’.106 Even to eight-year olds, for whom Whately felt
Easy Lessons was appropriate, his conclusion, after that graphic piece
of deduction, must have sounded reasonable. It was
best for all parties, the rich, the poor, and the middling, that
property should be secure, and that every one should be
allowed to possess what is his own, and to gain whatever he can
by honest means, and to keep it or spend it, as he thinks fit,—
provided he does no one any injury.107
Having established the unacceptability and unviability of
redistribution, Whately proceeded to demonstrate that the rich, in
disposing of their income, produced an acceptable and efficient
means of distribution which, echoing Adam Smith, was achieved
notwithstanding the fact that the rich man might be ‘a selfish man’,
who cared ‘nothing for the maintaining of all these families’, though
he still maintained them.108 Summarising his position, Whately
concluded that
the rich man, therefore though he appears to have so much
larger a share allotted to him, does not really consume it; but is
only the channel through which it flows to others. And it is by
this means much better distributed than it could have been
otherwise.109
This lesson ended, as did so many in Easy Lessons, with scripture
being cited to buttress the fundamental ‘laws’ of Whatelian political
economy. ‘It is plain’, Whately wrote, ‘from this, and from many
other such injunctions of the Apostles, that they did not intend to
destroy, among Christians, the security of property which leads to the
distinction between the rich and the poor’. Scripture forbade us to
‘covet our neighbour’s goods’, not because ‘he makes a right use of
them, but because they are his’.110 This was the characteristic mode
of Whately’s presentation in Easy lessons, as preacher, ideologue,
and teacher he conveyed the principles of political economy as
incontrovertible ‘laws’.
Easy Lessons in Money Matters was among those school-books
which were not published by the commissioners of national
education, but sanctioned by them and supplied to national schools at
reduced prices. It was available to the public for one shilling, to
national schools for threepence, and to ‘poor schools’ for
sixpence.111 It was also among the ‘gratuitous stock’ given to schools
when they were taken into the national system and which was
renewed at the end of every four years. This consisted in one
specimen copy of each book which had to be kept in the
classroom.112 Easy Lessons was also the text used in teacher training
and as a basis for both annual and general examinations of teachers
for classification and promotion. In 1835 the commissioners of
national education proposed to establish five professorships in their
Central Training Institution and Central Model Schools in
Marlborough Street, Dublin, including one in ‘Composition, English
literature, history, geography, and political economy’.113 The
professor appointed was Robert Joseph Sullivan who lectured on,
among many other subjects, ‘The Elements of Political Economy,
taking Archbishop Whateley’s [sic] “Easy Lessons on Money
Matters”, as the basis; and touching only on those topics which are
plain, practical, and corrective of popular prejudices’.114 By 1855
Sullivan was assisted in his labours by John Rintoul.115 In 1870
Rintoul was giving ‘special instruction’ in the English Department in
the ‘Elements of Political Economy’, using Easy Lessons and the
‘lessons in the national school books on the same subject’ and still
touching ‘only on those topics which are plain, practical, and
corrective of popular prejudices’.116
Political economy was also taught at the Albert National
Agricultural Training Institution at Glasnevin, Dublin.117 In 1879
‘literary instruction’ was given by D.P.Downing, which included a
course in the ‘elements of political economy’.118 Writing in 1853,
J.Macdonnell, a teacher in Larne Model Agricultural National
School, stated that political economy had ‘always formed a part of
the education of the boys here, but more especially during the past
year have I felt myself called on to devote more than ordinary
attention to it’.119 It seems quite certain that other agricultural
schools also provided instruction on the subject. Political economy
was also studied by pupil teachers in the District National Model
Schools who were required to master the complete text of Easy
Lessons on Money Matters.120 To judge by the evidence of
Ballymena and Coleraine District Model Schools, one hour per week
was devoted to the combined study of Easy Lessons on Reasoning
and Easy Lessons on Money Matters.121 In competitive examinations
for inspectorships political economy was an obligatory subject. As
well as Easy Lessons, Books I and II of Adam Smith’s Wealth of
Nations were also prescribed. There was also a more advanced
optional course in the subject which required potential school
inspectors to study, in addition to the basic course, Books III and V
of Wealth of Nations, Malthus’s Essay on Population, Senior, and
Books I, II, III and V of John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political
Economy.122 There is some evidence that political economy was
taught in elementary schools outside the national system, for example
in the schools of the Church Education Society. This Society was
founded in Dublin in 1839 by clergy and laity of the established
Church ‘united in conscientious objection to the recently established
system of National Education in Ireland’.123 Easy Lessons was
available (for ninepence) in the lists of books recommended for use
in its schools.124 It was also used for instruction at the Society’s
Training School, Kildare Place, Dublin.125
National teachers were appointed by local patrons and school
committees but the commissioners had to be satisfied as to their
moral and intellectual fitness. Teachers were categorised as first,
second, and third class (with ‘divisions’ within the first class) as well
as ‘probationers’. Some teaching was also done by monitors and by
pupil-teachers in the model schools. Teachers had to have been
instructed at the ‘normal establishment’ or Central Training
Institution in Marlborough Street, Dublin ‘or shall have been
pronounced duly qualified by the superintendent of the district in
which the school is situated’.126 The salary received by teachers
depended on their classification, ‘regard being had to their
qualifications, the average number of children in attendance, the state
of the school’ and the ‘extent of instruction afforded in it’.127 Women
teachers were graded in the same way as men but were paid less in
every class. There was an obligatory classification every five years
and an annual optional examination for classification and promotion
(or, in some cases, demotion). The first general classification for
male teachers took place in 1848 and for female teachers in 1849.
These examinations were both written and oral, the written usually
preceding the oral by five to six months. The written examinations
were usually held on the same day throughout Ireland, were corrected
by the district inspectors and the results forwarded to the head
inspectors. Failure at the written meant disqualification from the oral
examination.128
In their first general examination, held in 1848, male teachers were
examined in a wide range of subjects, including political economy.
The questions were based on Easy Lessons and the standard of
answering was, in general, considered by the head inspectors as
reasonably satisfactory. According to Edward Butler, head inspector,
the answering appeared ‘to have been of a fair average character, and
such as would lead us to infer that the lessons are taught in the school
with care and judgement’.129 He stated that 47 per cent of the
teachers examined in his jurisdiction answered in this manner, and 21
per cent ‘acquitted themselves in a very creditable manner’, while 32
per cent performed unsatisfactorily. He concluded that ‘much yet
remains to be done’.130 William McCreedy reported as follows: ‘The
answering of above a half was satisfactory, and of these a large
number showed a thorough comprehension of the entire subject, and
expressed themselves well in their replies; not seldom, indeed, in a
masterly manner, and with great precision and neatness’.131 James
W.Kavanagh reported that, in general, ‘all the teachers who are
upwards of a year in office showed some, and the trained teachers,
and such as had been taught in National Schools, showed a very
general and accurate knowledge of the substance of the lessons’. The
oral answering on the subject was far better than the written, but very
many teachers ‘appeared not to have studied the little treatise itself—
the extent of their knowledge being confined to the chapters
contained in the class books’.132 James Patten, head inspector for the
north west district, found the teachers ill-prepared for the
examination in political economy and disappointing in their
answering. The teachers expressed regret at having ‘omitted to make
themselves more familiar with the principles treated of’ in Easy
Lessons and promised to amend their ways.
In the following year, 1849, James Patten found the answering
again unsatisfactory. Only 13 per cent of those examined in his area
reached the highest standard; he received no answers from 31 per cent
of the candidates. He graded 26 per cent of the teachers as ‘middling’
and 30 per cent as ‘defective’.133 Matters improved in 1850, however,
with Patten reporting that the satisfactory marks of ‘good’ and ‘pretty
fair’ had risen to 47.5 per cent and the proportion of candidates not
submitting answers had declined dramatically to 7.3 per cent.134 The
‘satisfactory’ ratings in Patten’s area improved again in 1852 to 54
per cent, and to a remarkable 84.5 per cent in 1853, moving down
marginally to 82 per cent in 1855. The lowest grading of ‘very bad’
improved to 6 per cent in 1852, and reached zero in both 1853 and
1855. The number of candidates whose answering was ‘very
superior’ was zero in 1850, but rose to 0.68 per cent, 1 per cent, and
9 per cent respectively in 1852, 1853, and 1855.135 In his 1850
report, William McCreedy also noted that teachers had improved in
their answering in political economy on their 1848 performance.136
The ‘satisfactory’ ratings for McCreedy for the years 1850, 1851, and
1852 were 67 per cent, 47.5 per cent, and 63 per cent respectively,
while his ‘very bad’ category was 10 per cent in 1850 and 8 per cent
in 1852, having climbed dramatically to 28 per cent in 1851. His
‘very superior’ category was vacant in 1850 but stood at 3 per cent
and 2.5 per cent respectively in 1851 and 1852.137
The results of the written examination for teachers seem to have
been reproduced even less frequently than for the oral ones in the
various Reports of the Commissioners of National Education, though
the actual examination questions in the various subjects were
frequently printed. The accounts of the written examinations give
details of the number of teachers examined, the number of questions
in each subject, the total number of answers possible, the number of
‘satisfactory’ answers, the number of ‘imperfect’ answers, and the
percentage of questions attempted. There were three categories of
examination papers, A, B, and C which were set for first-class,
second-class and third-class teachers (including probationers)
respectively. Given the limited information available it is impossible
to draw any firm conclusions concerning the standard of
performance. However, from a truly homoeopathic sample it seems
as if, in general, the amount of ‘satisfactory’ answering compared
quite favourably with that marked ‘imperfect’. For example, the ratio
of ‘satisfactory’ to ‘imperfect’ answering for William McCreedy’s
area in 1851 was 0:60, 16.7:61.1, and 23.8:30.4, 31.8:36.4, and 15.7:
34.5. The equivalent figures from James Patten’s returns for 1852 were
16.7:41.7, 32.8:18, and 10.1:19.7.138
The annual reports contained occasional accounts of examinations
in various subjects (including political economy) for pupil teachers,
paid monitresses, agricultural pupils, and regular national school
pupils. For example, the returns from Bailieborough District Model
School in 1851 gave details of the performance in political economy
of four pupil-teachers (three Bs and one C), two agricultural pupils
(one B and one C), and four paid monitresses (three Bs and one C),
where A, B, C, D, and E stood for ‘very good’, ‘good’, ‘middling’,
‘bad’, and ‘very bad’.139 The report from the Trim District Model
School for the same year informed us that the five (named) pupilteachers answered two questions satisfactorily, nine questions
imperfectly, and one question wrongly.140 In Coleraine District
Model Schools six candidates were adjudged to have been ‘very
good’ (two), ‘good’ (one), ‘tolerable’ (one), and ‘poor’ (two).141 In
the District Model Schools in Ballymena there were seven pupilteachers presenting for examination and they were marked
‘excellent’ (three), ‘very good’ (two), ‘good’ (one), and ‘poor’
(one)142
There were a number of accounts in the reports of the annual
public examinations of schoolchildren in the District Model Schools.
For example, in October 1851 the boys of Bailieborough District
Model School were examined in several subjects, including political
economy, by Inspectors James Patten and Eugene A.Conwell, ‘in the
presence of many respectable residents in the town and
neighbourhood’.143 The Newry District Model School’s examination
of the same year (which also included political economy, for boys
only) was conducted by Inspectors James Patten and Edward Butler,
‘in the presence of a large and representative audience’.144 In 1853 this
public examination of the pupils in Newry was conducted by the
head teachers, pupil-teachers, and monitresses and it included several
questions in political economy, again only for boys.145
The examination questions set for teachers were frequently
reproduced in the Reports of the Commissioners, but those for other
groups were rarely published. An exception was the very
comprehensive Powis Report which contained the papers in political
economy set by the civil service commissioners for the competitive
examinations for inspectors of national schools, held in December
1869 and February 1870.146 The annual Report for 1851 contained an
example of an examination for pupil-teachers given by Edward
Butler at Trim District Model School.147 He asked students to give an
‘abstract of the lesson on rent’ and to ‘write out the heads of a lesson
on value, for Fourth Class boys’.148
In the examinations for teachers, questions were asked on such
topics as the division of labour, fixed and circulating capital, rent,
wages, interest, taxation, money, and the national debt. But the topic
which recurred most frequently was the theory of value. The
questions leave us in no doubt that cost-of-production and especially
labour theories of value were not only unscientific, but also wicked.
Teachers were asked, for instance, to show that ‘it is not the labour
employed in producing any thing that makes it valuable’,149 and the
following question was put in 1850: ‘To suppose that it is the labour
which has been bestowed on any thing that gives it value, is quite a
mistake’.150 Even when questions were couched in neutral terms,
there was little doubt as to what answer was required.
The first general examination for male teachers was held in the
revolutionary year of 1848 and the examination papers, which were
reproduced in toto in the Report for that year, reflected the
ideological anxieties of the upper orders in Irish society, as indeed
did the papers for subsequent years. Several questions reflected the
fear that anarchy was about to be loosed upon the country. There was
even a hint of desperation about a question in 1848: ‘Why is even a bad
government better than no government? Why cheaper?’151 in 1856
candidates were asked to prove that ‘anarchy is more prejudicial to a
country than tyranny’.152 According to the ruling ideology, the main
function of the state was to provide the conditions necessary to
enable the market to function efficiently, the sine qua non of which
was the guaranteeing of security of persons and property. The state was
strictly precluded from having a determining role within the market
system. State intervention, usually pejoratively described as
‘interference’, was held to be, at best pointless, and, at worst,
positively pernicious. ‘How do you show’, candidates were asked in
1855, ‘that all attempts of government to regulate by law the rate of
wages must be useless and mischievous?’153
Security of property was a ubiquitous theme in the examination
questions of the late 1840s and throughout the 1850s. According to
Nassau Senior, writing in 1843, the reason British capital did not flow
to Ireland was because of the chief ‘moral evil’ of that country—‘the
insecurity of persons and of property’ arising from the ‘tendency to
violence and resistance to law which is the most prominent, as well
as the most mischievous, part of the Irish character’.154 This
insecurity of property put capital, notorious for its timidity, to flight.
It was accepted, in the words of an examination question in 1848, that
‘inequality of fortunes must necessarily arise with security of
property’.155 This individualist, libertarian ideology bought liberty at
the expense of equality, but this inequality was twice blessed as it
enabled not only liberty but also the Christian duty of charity. If the
poor did not exist then the propensity of the rich towards being
charitable would have remained unexercised. Charity benefited the
poor materially and the rich spiritually and, as a bonus, helped to
counteract communism.156 in 1848 teachers were asked to show that
‘security of property is essential to the exercise of charity as
recommended by the Apostles’.157 Egalitarian ideas were condemned
as uneconomic, morally and politically dangerous, and unscriptural.
A few examples of questions on these related themes should
suffice: ‘Is security of property necessary to the growth of
wealth?’.158 ‘Illustrate, by historical examples, the evils arising from
insecurity of property’,159 ‘Would the spoliation of the property of a
rich man…and its division among the people, prove beneficial to the
labouring population of a country? Show why not’,160 ‘Relate the
fable by which the mistake that the existence of the rich causes the
poor to be worse off, is exposed’.161 All of these examples come from
1848. In 1849 a whole paper was devoted to the section ‘Rich and
Poor’ in Easy Lessons on Money Matters. Candidates were asked to
develop such points as to the ‘Injurious effects of laws that would,
with regard to amount of property, place all persons, and oblige them
to remain, upon the same footing’, the ‘Advantages resulting to all
the inhabitants of a country from security of property’, ‘The rich
cannot but benefit the country’, and ‘The Apostles did not intend that
the distinction between rich and poor should be abolished among
Christians’.162
Examination questions leave us in no doubt as to the pernicious
nature of trade unions and strikes. In one examination teachers were
asked to ‘State the evils resulting from Trades’ Unions and
Strikes’,163 and in another, in the same year, were asked to ‘Give a brief
account of an unsuccessful Strike’.164 In the following year
candidates were asked to ‘Enumerate the several ways in which
labour and the employment of capital have been sometimes interfered
with, by what are called Combinations and Trade Unions’.165 In 1852
a question was asked as to whether a successful or an unsuccessful
strike was likely to prove ‘more hurtful to the workman’ and this was
followed by the question: ‘In what way can the teacher exert himself
with a view to prevent the lamentable consequences of such unions
or combinations of the employed against the employer?’166 in the
same year teachers were asked ‘To what departments of trade in
Dublin have Trades’ Unions proved injurious?’167
It is interesting to note that in the years immediately following the
Great Famine, the activities of corn dealers were felt to be in need of
justification. ‘What is the illustration made use of’, began a question
in 1848, ‘to show the beneficial action of the corn dealer upon the
market of provisions, in times of scarcity?’168 In another examination,
in the same year, candidates were asked to show ‘in what way the
business of the Corn Dealer ministers to the public services’,
meaning the common good.169 The question was rephrased the
following year: ‘How is it shown that the interest of the Corn Dealer
coincides with that of the public?’170
Although the scientific nature of the discourse of political
economy was much trumpeted, where necessary it was supplemented
(and perhaps eventually subverted) by the more traditional and more
ideologically-potent discourses of morality and religion. To give a
small example, candidates were asked in the examination to prove
that, with respect to interest, it was not only reasonable but ‘just’ to
be ‘required to pay for a loan of money, as for the loan of any thing
else’.171 In like fashion, when the redistribution of wealth is
described as ‘robbery’ and ‘spoliation’ it is difficult not to conclude
that this activity is morally disapproved of. We have already seen
that ‘spoliation’ of the property of the rich was not considered to be
beneficial to the labouring poor. ‘Would the robbery of the rich’,
candidates were asked in 1848, ‘and the equal distribution of the
wealth among the poor, prove beneficial to the people?’172 On the
crucial questions concerning security of property and the distinction
between rich and poor, the authority of the Apostles was sometimes
invoked. We have already noted that the Apostles taught that security
of property was ‘necessary to the exercise of charity’, and that they
did not intend abolishing the distinction between rich and poor
among Christians. In 1856 the following question was asked:
‘Passages from the New Testament are often quoted to prove that the
security of property was not recognised by the Apostles; show that
this opinion is exactly the reverse of the fact’.173
The not-so-hidden agenda of the examination questions was to
undermine the cost-of-production and especially the labour theory of
value, and to deny the state any function in the redistribution of
wealth. The questions were clearly intended to justify the ways of
landlords and capitalists to tenants and wage-earners, and of the
owners of the means of production to the consumers. Rent was
justified on the basis that it was not responsible for the high price of
agricultural produce and, in like fashion, the cost of provisions was
held not to determine the rate of wages. In general, the coincidence
of the individual and the common good was assumed and harmony was
seen to exist (where the market was allowed its uninhibited course)
between labour and capital, tenant and landlord, poor and rich, and
also between nations. Inequalities were justified on economic, moral,
and theological terms, but these imbalances of power were not held
to vitiate the notion that all exchanges were mutually enriching, that,
as one question put it, ‘what the people receive in exchange is, on the
whole, a fair equivalent’.174
When Whately commented, ‘I am a very unpretending writer, for
my best works are the little ones’, he had in mind, no doubt, the
school textbooks he had produced. Of these Easy Lessons and the
extracts from it which were reproduced in school readers throughout
the nineteenth century were the most widely disseminated and
influential of Whately’s writings. Easy Lessons was one of the pivotal
texts in the popularisation of political economy among the children
of the working classes from the 1830s to the 1880s. Whately’s role as
an evangelist for political economy was pervasive in the formal
educational system. He was the de facto head of the Board of
National Education (1832–53) and he founded and funded the
Whately Chair of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin and
took a close interest in its progress. Outside the confines of schools
and universities, he exerted considerable influence through his
enthusiastic involvment in the Dublin Statistical Society, of which he
became the first president (1847–63), an office he held until his
death. It is to this Society (later to become the Statistical and Social
Inquiry Society of Ireland) that we turn in our next chapter in order to
examine its significant role, in association with the Barrington
lectures, which it administered, in spreading the gospel of political
economy.
5
‘TO THE POOR THE GOSPEL IS
PREACHED’
The Dublin Statistical Society and the Barrington
Lectures
When John Barrington (1800–36), a merchant of the city of Dublin
and a member of the Society of Friends, discovered a combination of
workmen against the firm of which he was a member, he was struck
with the ‘ignorance of their own true interests which the workmen
displayed, and he thought if they had been better informed they
would not have entered into unwise Combinations to regulate
Wages’.1 As a result, he bequeathed, on 14 July 1834, a sum of £3,
000 in trust to Edward and Richard Barrington ‘to be invested in
public securities; the interest arising from which to be applied to the
payment of a fit and proper person or persons, duly qualified to give
lectures on Political Economy in its most extended and useful sense,
“but particularly as relates to the conduct and duty of people to one
another”’,2
In 1849 the trustees of the Barrington bequest offered the council
of the Dublin Statistical Society the administration of its endowment
for promoting its lectures in political economy, an arrangement
which endures to this day.3 The trustees authorised the council to
appoint one or more lecturers, to be called ‘Barrington Lecturers on
Political Economy’, to hold their appointments for a period of one
year. John Barrington directed that the lectures should be given ‘in the
various towns and villages of Ireland, without distinction, and as
often as might be’. Applications from towns for courses of lectures
were sent to the Statistical Society each year in the month of March.
According to the ‘Regulations Respecting the Barrington Lecturers
on Political Economy’, applications emanating from ‘literary and
scientific societies, or from municipal bodies, are more favourably
entertained than those coming from persons in their
private capacity’.4 Such organisations were expected to provide local
arrangements and to pay for the lecture room and for advertising. A
small charge for admission might be made, though care had to be
98 THE DUBLIN STATISTICAL SOCIETY
taken that the ‘working classes have an opportunity of attending in
some part of the room at a charge not exceeding one shilling for the
entire course’.5
In 1860, the trustees decided to change the method of selecting
Barrington lecturers with a view to having only one lecturer, to be
appointed by competition, and to hold office for a period of three
years, with an annual income of £120, less income tax. Previous
incumbents were chosen by the council on the basis of holding
university positions in political economy, of having performed well
in the competition for the Whately chair in Trinity College Dublin or
as undergraduates, or on the basis of testimonials. Now each
candidate had to read a lecture of his own composition before the
trustees and members of the council, and also to give an unwritten
lecture on a subject chosen by council at one day’s notice. The
successful candidate had to give four courses of public lectures each
year, three in provincial towns, and one in Dublin.6 The first contest
was held in the Dublin Athenaeum in May, 1861 and the winner was
Andrew M. Porter, a barrister and graduate of Queen’s College
Belfast.7 When Porter completed his three-year stint, advertisements
for candidates were placed in the leading Irish and English papers.
The extempore lecture was replaced by an oral examination, ‘to be
conducted by three members of Council, being professors or exprofessors of political economy in the University of Dublin’.8 The
examiners were Longfield, Cairnes, and the current Whately
Professor, Arthur Houston. Six of the candidates passed ‘a highly
satisfactory examination in economic science, and subsequently
delivered lectures of no ordinary merit’ before the council,’ on topics
chosen by themselves.9 The appointment went to John Monroe, a
barrister and graduate of Queen’s College Galway, where he had
been a student of Cairnes. He graduated in 1857 and was a Senior
Scholar in Metaphysical and Economic Science (1858–9). He later
became Solicitor-General for Ireland and a judge of the High Court.
During the twenty-third session of the Society (1869–70), the
council ‘entered into a new and permanent arrangement’ with the
Barrington trustees and ‘resolved to enlarge the subject of the
lectures’ by adopting the name ‘Lectures on Social Science’, which,
they felt, was the modern equivalent of the testator’s intention. They
also reverted to the original mode of selecting lecturers: instead of
electing one lecturer for three years, they decided to elect two or
more lecturers for one year only.10 Under the new arrangements
Robert Donnell, later to become Whately Professor (1872–7), and
Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy at Queen’s
College Galway (1876–83), and William Mulholland were the
selected candidates. They were reappointed the following year.
However, in the twenty-fifth session (1871–2) an earlier
arrangement, whereby four lecturers were selected, each responsible
for one course, was resorted to.
Because of a decline in demand for the Barrington lectures by
local societies in the 1872–3 session, the council appointed a
committee to consider the matter, under the chairmanship of John
Kells Ingram and including William Neilson Hancock. Having
consulted with Edward, Richard, and Arthur Barrington, trustees of
the fund, the committee decided to substitute ‘teaching lectures’ for
the existing prelections, ‘with local committees to superintend and
give prizes, and local lecturers to be selected’.11 However, those
lecturers had to be approved by the lecture committee of the council.
They were divided into two classes: those who obtained university
prizes in political economy, and schoolmasters who had passed an
examination set by the Barrington lecture committee and obtained a
certificate of qualification to teach political economy. Of the first
class, two lecturers were selected in the twenty-seventh session
(1873–4), Revd Samuel Prenter, on the recommendation of a
Political Economy Class Committee of Belfast,12 and William H.
Dodd, on the recommendation of the committee of the Church of
Ireland Young Men’s Christian Association. The Belfast class
numbered fifty-five, of whom eighteen passed the examination while
eleven of the eighteen participants succeeded in Dublin. Prizes were
awarded to successful students from funds collected locally. Sixteen
schoolmasters presented themselves for the certificate examination,
having been recommended by local committees. Eleven succeeded
and eight of these were appointed Barrington lecturers.13 This
scheme remained in operation for the next twenty years though with
declining success. In the 1894–5 session the trustees reverted to the old
system of appointing a single Barrington lecturer. There were about
seventy candidates in all and the victor was Charles Hubert Oldham,
who continued in office until 1901.
Like the holders of the Whately chair at Trinity College Dublin,
many of the Barrington lecturers were young men who distinguished
themselves in various occupations in later life. James Anthony
Lawson, who held the Whately chair from 1841 to 1846, was
‘requested’ to be one of the first four Barrington lecturers ‘on
account of his distinguished position as a Political Economist’.14 The
other three, Moffett, Heron, and Hearn, were selected from a list of
candidates ‘who had all distinguished themselves at the professors’
examinations in the University’.15 Lawson, who was, for a short
time, an MP, became Solicitor-General, Attorney-General, and
finally a judge. Thomas William Moffett became Professor of Logic
and Metaphysics (and later of History, English Literature and Mental
Science), Registrar, and finally President of Queen’s College Galway.
Denis Caulfield Heron became Professor of Jurisprudence and
Political Economy at Queen’s College Galway, was, for a brief
period, an MP, and had a distinguished legal career. William Edward
Hearn was the first Professor of Greek in Galway; he emigrated to
Australia where he was one of the original professors in the
University of Melbourne, becoming, for a time, its Chancellor. Apart
from Lawson, three other Whately Professors had been Barrington
lecturers: Richard Hussey Walsh, John Elliot Cairnes, and Robert
Cather Donnell. Cairnes and Donnell also became professors at
Queen’s College Galway, while Cliffe Leslie became Professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy at Queen’s College Belfast, and
Charles Hubert Oldham went on to hold the Chair of Commerce at
University College Dublin. James H.Mussen Campbell became Lord
Chancellor of Ireland. Like John Monroe, Thomas Busteed also went
on to become a judge. Andrew Marshall Porter had a successful legal
career culminating in the office of Attorney-General.
Barrington lecturers were required to give ‘at least eight lectures in
Dublin, and at least twenty-four lectures in not less than four other
towns or villages in Ireland’.16 These lectures were organised locally,
especially by mechanics’ institutes and various literary, scientific,
and philosophical societies. In the session 1849–50, for instance,
lectures were delivered to the Working Classes Association, Belfast
(by Lawson), to the Mechanics’ Institute at Clonmel (by Moffett), to
the Mechanics’ Institute at Waterford (by Heron), to the Mechanics’
Institute at Dundalk (by Hearn), to the Dublin Mechanics’ Institute
(by Lawson, Heron, and Hearn), and to the Mutual Improvement
Association in Dublin (by Moffett). Additional voluntary courses
were delivered at Galway (by Moffett) and at Belturbet (by Hearn).
As might be expected, mechanics’ institutes were very active in the
organisation of Barrington lectures, not only in Dublin, Dundalk,
Clonmel, and Waterford as already mentioned, but also in Ardee,
Portaferry, Wexford, Carlow, Navan, Lurgan, and Drogheda.
Lectures were also held in Coleraine and Downpatrick and, as both
towns had Mechanics’ Institutes which were Corresponding Societies
with the Statistical Society, it is almost certain that they organised the
lectures.17 Barrington lectures were held in the Literary Societies of
Tuam and Lurgan and, presumably, at those of Kilrea, Lisburn, and
Enniskillen, all of which were Corresponding Societies. The Literary
and Scientific Societies of Limerick, Belturbet, Garvagh, and Cork
held lecture-courses, as, most likely, did Belturbet which was a
Corresponding Society. There were Mutual Improvement Societies in
Waterford and Limavaddy and a Mutual Instruction Society in
Mountmellick; all were Corresponding Societies and were,
presumably, hosts to the Barrington lectures. Certainly the Mutual
Improvement Association of Dublin was exposed to political economy
on more than one occasion. Series of lectures were organised by an
extraordinarily varied array of societies: Dublin Church of Ireland
Young Men’s Christian Association, Dublin Presbyterian
Association, Dublin Mercantile Clerks’ Association, Dublin Working
Men’s Committee, Kilkenny Literary and Scientific Institution,
Belfast Working Classes Association, Cork Catholic Young Men’s
Society, Dundalk Free Public Library, Enniskillen Committee for
Promoting Exhibitions of Manufactures, Armagh Natural History and
Philosophical Society, Dungannon Society for Promoting Science,
Literature, and the Arts, and the Friends’ Institute, Dublin. Again, it
is highly probable that the Barrington lectures held at various times
in Newry, Banbridge, Galway, and Limerick were organised by the
Newry Institute, the Banbridge Literary Institute, the Royal Galway
Institution, and the Limerick Social Inquiry Society, respectively, all
of which were Corresponding Societies with the Statistical Society.
Sometimes local societies were especially set up to avail of the
Barrington scheme, and on a few occasions public bodies such as the
Commissioners of the Boroughs of Trim and Clonakilty and the
‘Mayor and inhabitants of Belfast’ took the initiative.
As we have noted, eight Barrington lecturers were appointed from
the ranks of schoolmasters in the session 1873–4. They were: Andrew
Clements (Anahilt Endowed School, Co. Down), D. Campbell
(Blackwater Town National School, Co. Tyrone), Michael Mulhern
(Caddlebrook, Co. Roscommon), C.McDermott (Corraclare Science
School, Co. Clare), Edward Reynolds (Dunmanway Model School,
Co. Cork), John Lyons (Drumcoe National School, Co. Donegal),
J.Moylan (Limerick Model School), John Magennis (Lisded National
School, Co. Fermanagh). These seem to have been the only venues at
which political economy was taught under this particular scheme.
The Barrington lectures were most in demand between 1850 and
1872, and the scheme was reasonably satisfactory in the 1870s.
However, in the 1880s and 1890s it went into serious decline. It is
worth analysing the twenty-two year span between 1849–50 and
1871–2 (there was no Report for the session 1869–70) when the
lectures were at the height of their popularity. A total of 113 courses
(there were usually six lectures in a course) were given in political
economy, at some fifty locations throughout Ireland, giving an
average of five per session over the twenty-two year period. The
busiest session was 1853–4 when courses were provided at a total of
eleven different locations, followed by 1871–2 with nine, and 1870–1
with eight. On the other hand, only two courses were given in 1866–
7, and three in 1863–4 and 1868–9. In this period twelve courses
were conducted in Dublin, followed by Cork with six and, curiously
enough, Armagh, also with six. Belfast and Clonmel organised five
courses each, followed by Waterford, Dundalk, Limerick, Derry, and
Lurgan with four, Galway, Coleraine, Kilkenny, Drogheda, and
Enniskillen with three, Belturbet, Lisburn, Holywood, Downpatrick,
Portaferry, Kilrea, Limavaddy, Newry, and Ballymena with two,
while the remaining twenty-six locations had one series of lectures
each. The popularity of the Barrington lectures was greatest in
Ulster, where almost half of the entire series of courses was given. It
accounted for 46.9 per cent of all Barrington lectures, followed by
Leinster with 28.32 per cent, Munster with 20.35 per cent, and
Connacht with a mere 4.42 per cent (a grand total of five courses).
In 1850, at the end of the first year of its stewardship of the
Barrington lectures, the council of the Statistical Society declared that
it had ‘much reason to be satisfied with the manner in which the
lecturers discharged their duties’ and that the trustees of the bequest
were happy with the new arrangements.18 The following year the
council reported that it had received communications indicating ‘how
completely the lectures have fulfilled the intention of the founder’.19
At Tuam, the Report went on,
we learn that the numbers attending the lectures were very
large, considering the size of the town; that 100 attended the
first lecture, and at each succeeding lecture the numbers
attending increased, so that 1,100 and upwards enjoyed the
benefit of the lectures; and the committee describe the lectures
of Dr Lawson as calculated to advance the knowledge of
economic science, and win attention to its principles.20
The directors of the Dublin Mechanics’ Institute stated that the
attendance was ‘400 at each lecture’, adding that ‘lectures on
political economy had been heretofore viewed by the class who
frequent the Mechanics’ Institute as adverse to the interests of the
working man’, but that Professor Moffett, in his recent course, ‘had
invested the subject with a charm that would, on a future occasion,
insure it a more favourable, perhaps, they might say a more just
reception and hearing, than it has hitherto been wont to meet with’.21
According to the council, the 1851–2 session was also very
successful. Lawson’s lectures at the Royal Dublin Society ‘were very
numerously attended, and great interest was taken in them’, while
there were ‘most favourable accounts of the effects produced by the
lectures in carrying out the objects of the founder’.22 In 1853 both
Moffett’s and Cliffe Leslie’s courses in Dublin ‘proved extremely
successful’, and Moffett’s lectures at Derry, Downpatrick, Coleraine,
Holywood, and Portaferry were ‘attended with the most marked
success,—a result, we believe, which that extremely efficient lecturer
never fails to produce’.23 The 1853–4 results were again successful,
and ‘most satisfactory accounts’ were received from the various
bodies under whose auspices the lectures were given.24 ‘We can refer
with pleasure’, stated the council in its Report for the following year,
to the accounts received from several of the provincial towns of
the lectures, lecturers, and attendance. Even in the small town of
Trim, the numbers attending exceeded, on an average, one
hundred, and on occasion were so high as one hundred and
sixty. The audience, we are informed, were highly gratified
with the course of lectures, and expressed a hope that on a
future occasion they might be favoured with another. This
growing taste for economic science must be very pleasing to all
who are interested in the successful working of the Barrington
bequest, and the best results may be anticipated to flow from
the diffusion of sound principles in this department of
knowledge among the rural population and the poorer classes
of our towns and cities.25
According to the Report of 1855–6, Professor Moffett’s (and
political economy’s) success continued. The return forwarded by the
secretary of the Dundalk Mechanics’ Institute disclosed the
‘gratifying fact, that the attendance was nearly double at the last
lecture what it was at the first, and that it increased progressively
between the two extremes,—a sure indication of efficiency on the
part of the lecturer, and of appreciation of his efforts by the
audience’.26 The council also reported favourably for the following
two years. In 1861–2, the council ‘received the most satisfactory
assurances of the pleasure and profit’ that Andrew Porter, the first
lecturer to be appointed under the new system, ‘gave to the audiences
who attended the lectures’.27 At the end of his three-year stint the
council expressed their ‘entire satisfaction with the manner in which
that gentleman discharged his duties, and also their belief that
through his able agency sound views of economic science have been
very widely diffused’.28
The first clear indication that there was a decline in the support of
the Barrington lectures occurred in the 1864–5 session, when John
Monroe, Porter’s successor, began his three-year incumbancy. He
reported that the attendance at Banbridge, Armagh, and Kilkenny
‘was in general fair’, while in Dublin such lectures did not seem ‘to
prove as attractive as their value to the working classes, for whom
they are intended, unquestionably deserves’.29 The following year
Monroe delivered courses in Cork and Lurgan, both of which were
successful, especially in Cork where the audiences ‘were never less
than one thousand, and on one occasion exceeded twelve hundred’, if
we are to believe the lecturer. The audiences in Lurgan were not
numbered but they were ‘large and attentive’ and they ‘manifested
their interest in the subjects discussed by asking a variety of
questions at the close of the course’.30 The Report for the year 1866–
7 session pointed out that in recent years lectures in the provinces had
been attended by ‘large audiences, who evinced considerable interest
in the subjects brought under their notice’, whereas in Dublin
applications for courses were now seldom made and there was
sometimes ‘much difficulty in procuring an opportunity for the
delivery of these lectures’.31 The council’s Report for the following
year revealed that no application had been received by them for
lectures in Dublin, nor had any room been placed at their disposal for
the delivery of lectures. In Dublin alone, the council felt, there was
‘an apparent apathy and indifference among the classes whose
benefit was especially contemplated in the establishment of these
lectures’.32 in an attempt to counteract the declining interest in
political economy, especially in Dublin, in the session 1869–70 the
council decided to enlarge the subject of the lectures by adopting the
name of ‘Lectures on Social Science’ and to revert to their original
mode of selecting lecturers.33
These measures did not manage to halt the decline in interest in
political economy in Dublin, a decline which soon extended to the
rest of the country. This state of affairs was blamed on the ‘number
of Societies formed for the purpose of giving lectures’,34 presumably
without recourse to the Barrington fund. The council appointed a
committee, with Ingram as chairman, ‘to consider the best mode of
conducting the Barrington Lectures’.35 The operation of the plans
devised by this committee was pronounced ‘so far successful’ in the
Report for the session 1873–4,36 and as ‘working satisfactorily’ in the
year 1875–6.37 We are informed that the Council had ‘three classes in
successful operation in Dublin’ in the session 1878–9.38 Throughout
the 1880s and in the early 1890s there were either no reports on the
Barrington lectures, or more often a perfunctory statement of the fact
that the report of the examiners for the Barrington lectures was read
and prizes and certificates distributed to the candidates. According to
the Report for 1893–4, there were ‘no lectures under the Barrington
Trust delivered’ and the lectures had not been ‘during the last few
years, as successful as the trustees could desire’.39 Another new
scheme was adopted, and the lectures of 1895 were pronounced ‘a
most complete success’.40 The lecturer was C.H.Oldham, who had
been chosen from as many as seventy candidates.41 He held office
until 1901, but nothing further of his labours was reported by the
council of the Statistical Society. Apart from intermittent lecturing in
the 1920s, the first three decades of the twentieth century saw the
virtual total collapse of the Barrington scheme. In 1919 S.Shannon
Millin stated that the Barrington fund ‘had lain dormant for 12 years
in consequence of the difficulty of finding suitable persons who
would administer a trust which involved very considerable care and
judgement’.42 But there was also an all-too-visible deficiency in
demand for political economy in Ireland, beginning in the mid-1860s
and continuing relentlessly (despite occasional outbursts of
enthusiasm for economic knowledge) for the rest of the century and
well into the succeeding one. The scheme for schoolmaster-lecturers
seems to have been no more successful than the others. When it was
inaugurated in the session 1873–4, eight lecturers were selected. By
1875–6 only four schools were providing Barrington lectures:
Limerick
Model
School,
Dunmanway
Model
School,
Blackwatertown National School, and Anahilt Endowed School. By
the following year Blackwatertown was no longer providing classes,
and a year later Edward Reynolds ceased lectures at Dunmanway. By
1880 only Limerick and Anahilt schools were in operation and the
scheme seems to have failed, as there is no further reference to it in
the council’s Report.
Given the circumstances which led John Barrington to endow the
teaching of political economy, there is no doubt that his intended
audience was the working classes. Furthermore, the ‘Regulations
Respecting the Barrington Lecturers on Political Economy’ specified
that the charge levied for each course should not exceed one shilling
for members of the lower orders seeking economic enlightenment.43
A number of the council’s annual Reports refer specifically to the fact
that the Barrington lectures were primarily intended for the working
classes.44 Lectures were given to various working-class groups such
as the Working Classes Association of Belfast and, in 1876–7, to a
‘class of working men in Bolton-street under the auspices of a
working men’s committee’.45 In 1878–9 and in the following year
courses were given to Working Men’s Clubs in Christchurch Place
and in York Street, Dublin. The council’s Report for 1879–80
proudly noted that ‘Mr Murphy, the Dublin working-man who was
selected to preside at the recent Trades Union Congress’, had
‘obtained a certificate for proficiency in Political Economy’ at an
examination following one of these courses in a Working Men’s
Club.46 John Monroe’s extraordinarily successful course of lectures
in Cork in 1865–6 was arranged by a committee consisting of the
‘foremen of the principal shipbuilding and mercantile establishments
in that city’ and the audiences were ‘composed principally of large
numbers of intelligent artisans’.47
Barrington lectures were organised by eleven mechanics’
institutes, but it is highly probable that a large majority of the
approximately twenty-six institutes in the country were also involved.
In Great Britain, most mechanics’ institutes had their origins in the
1820s, began to decline in the 1830s and had, more or less, collapsed
by 1850. Several mechanics’ institutes were founded in Ireland in the
1820s—such as Cork, Ennis, Galway, Limerick, and Waterford.
However, they were most active in the years 1840 to 1855, rather
later than in Britain.48 It is generally held that in Britain the
movement as a whole was a failure because it did not teach
operatives work-related skills, and was soon taken over by the middle
classes. In Ireland, it is probably true to say that while in the early
days the ‘rough but intelligent sons of industry’49 were well
represented in the institutes, in later years few mechanics were to be
found within their walls. According to Cliffe Leslie, in a two-part
paper which he delivered to the Statistical Society in February and
June 1852, there was a ‘universal complaint, that mechanics’
institutes are attended by persons of a higher grade than that for
which they were designed; and the same observation applies to the
athenaeums and literary societies’.50 while this evinced ‘on the part
of the higher classes, a willingness to associate themselves both in
name and fact with their humbler brethren’,51 it also meant that the
classes for whom these institutes were intended were largely
excluded from them. Significantly, Leslie dealt with both mechanics’
and literary institutions, observing that ‘Mechanics’ Institutions,
Athenaeums, and Literary Societies are, for the most part, names for
associations of the same character, composition, and objects’,52
which ‘in their full development exhibit so close a resemblance, both
as to their arrangements and the classes by which they are supported,
that they may be considered and treated of together by the social
inquirer’.53
Leslie relied heavily on J.W.Hudson’s History of Adult Education
but found it seriously lacking in authority in regard to Ireland. Leslie
disputed Hudson’s claim that mechanics’ institutes ‘never prospered
in Ireland for any lengthened period’ and that the literary and
philosophical societies presented the ‘same state of inactivity and
uselessness’ that characterised similar institutions in Great Britain.54
Leslie conducted a limited survey of Irish institutions to discover
what services they provided and, more importantly for our purpose,
the social composition of their membership. Thirty-five such
societies had come under his notice and he received replies with
regard to twenty-seven of them. Only four of these existed prior to
1840, and thirteen had come into existence since the commencement
of 1848. Leslie had no exact knowledge of the number of members
‘belonging to different ranks and occupations’, but his impression
was that about 50 per cent of the total number were shopkeepers,
shopkeepers’ assistants, and clerks, 25 per cent had trades
(carpenters, masons, and so forth) or were ‘workmen or mechanics’,
20 per cent were professional men or merchants, and the remaining 5
per cent were designated ‘members of the higher class’.55 Leslie
emphasised that this was a mere impression, but it gives us some idea
of the social composition of the likely audiences for the Barrington
lectures in mid nineteenth-century Ireland.
According to the Regulations, Barrington lecturers had to be ‘duly
qualified to give lectures on Political Economy in its most extended
and useful sense, “but particularly as relates to the conduct and duty
of people to one another’”,56 a formulation frequently reiterated in
the annual Reports of the council of the Statistical Society. Each
lecturer was required to ‘furnish an abstract of all his proposed
lectures to the Council, to be submitted by the Council to the trustees
for their approval’, and lecturers were forbidden to deliver any
lecture the abstract of which had been ‘disapproved of by the
Council or by the trustees’.57 On completion of the course, each
lecturer had to make a statement that all his lectures had been ‘in
conformity with the terms of the bequest, and the regulations of the
Council on the subject’.58 There was a strict instruction that every
lecturer should ‘abstain in his lectures from all allusions to party
politics or religious polemics’.59
It was not until May 1859 that a specific letter of instruction was
addressed to Barrington lecturers. It was issued by the honorary
secretaries of the Statistical Society, W.Neilson Hancock,
J.E.Cairnes, and Henry Dix Hutton, to inform lecturers what
procedures the council wished them to adopt in their courses. It
reminded lecturers of the circumstances which had led John
Barrington to set up the fund, and was, in essence, a vindication of
his purpose: if workers were better informed (through the good
offices of political economy) then they would not enter into ‘unwise
Combinations to regulate Wages’ or to oppose machinery.60
Paragraph two of the letter made reference to recent disturbances in
Ireland: ‘The Council observe that recently there have been in Ireland
several cases of Combinations against machinery; for example, that of
the agricultural labourers against reaping machines in the County of
Kilkenny, of the shoemakers and tailors against sewing machines,
and of the small against the large shopkeepers in Dublin, and of the
weavers against power looms at Lurgan’.61 It is worth noting that in
the published Report of the council for that year, no reference was
made to these events; the ‘expediency’ of dealing with the topic of
combinations was justified on the basis of ‘recent strikes in London’
and ‘similar movements of a less formidable kind in other parts of
the country’.62
In view of the circumstances of the foundation of the Barrington
lectures and of the intention of the founder, the council urged each
lecturer ‘to devote one lecture at least to the subject of combinations
amongst workmen—the Lecture to be based on ascertained facts and
applications of principle to them’. The lecturer should consider ‘not
only the conduct of the workmen, but also the means by which the
partial suffering incidental to industrial progress’ might be
diminished.63 With respect to the other lectures, the council thought
it desirable that the lecturer should ‘select practical questions in
illustration of general principle rather than treat of the principles of
Political Economy in the abstract’. Such questions as emigration and
the effects of the discovery of gold, the letter went on, as well as ‘the
Ship-owners’ complaints as to Navigation Laws, the Paper Duties,
and other unwise modes of raising a revenue, would afford
opportunities of illustrating some of the chief principles of Political
Economy’. Such illustrations, it concluded, would ‘in the opinion of
the Council, be more attractive than abstract expositions of the
elementary parts of the Science’.64
Only on a few occasions did the Reports of the council on the
Barrington lectures give any indication of the actual topics dealt with
by the lecturers. The most detailed account of the content of lectures
was published in the Report for the year 1862–3:
The law of free trade in relation to commerce and to labour; —
the nature of money, and the effect of modern gold
dis coveries; —the conditions of national prosperity in relation
to Population; —Emigration; —Taxation; —the Galway
Contract; —our Postal System; —Public Subsidies; —Work
and Wages, with special reference to Irish Industry;—Results
of Co-operative Organisation; —Schemes for providing
Employment for Women; —the Irish Land Question Stated; —
Tenant Right; —the Irish Poor Law; —Public Charities; —the
Social Condition of Ireland, as evidenced by recent Statistics of
Population and of Agriculture.65
In the session 1864–5, John Monroe lectured on ‘Free Trade and
Protection; on Trades’ Unions and Strikes; on the Economic Aspects
of Slavery; on Emigration; on our Fiscal System &c’.66 In the
following year, Monroe delivered his enormously successful lectures
in Cork and Lurgan on the subjects of ‘Cooperation, its rise and
progress—Post Office savings banks, Friendly Societies, Government
Annuities, and Free Trade’.67 When, in 1869–70, the council decided
to enlarge the scope of the Barrington lectures by replacing the term
‘political economy’ with that of ‘social science’, there was, in
consequence, a more extensive range of topics available to the
lecturers. The council decided ‘to propose as a guide to the lecturers,
that they should enter upon any subjects discussed at the meetings of
the Social Science Congress’.68 This was the name commonly given
to the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science
founded in Birmingham by Lord Brougham in 1856, an organisation
whose interests were wide-ranging, extending far beyond the
confines of even a generously-defined political economy.
Occasionally, cards were issued announcing a series of Barrington
lectures, and one of these which survives informed the public that
C.H.Oldham, (who held office between 1895 and 1901) would be
lecturing on the following topics: ‘The Sources of Wealth in Ireland’,
‘British Supremacy in Foreign Trade’, ‘The Currency Question in
Europe and America’, ‘The Present Position of the Working
Classes’, ‘The Work of Business Management in Industrial
Progress’, and ‘The Eight Hour Day and the Comparative Efficiency
of Labour’.69
Though it was not part of the original plan of the Dublin Statistical
Society to engage in the popular broadcasting of political economy
through lectures and teaching, when asked to do so by the Barrington
trust it gladly accepted. Thereafter the Society saw the organising of
these lectures as one of its most significant functions. According to
Captain (later Sir) Thomas Larcom, a vice-president of the Statistical
Society, the Barrington lecturers fulfilled ‘an important part in our
general objects’, carrying ‘to all parts of the country sound
information on important points’ and diffusing ‘insensibly an
appetite for the information they convey’. In return the Society would
receive ‘local support and local collection of facts’ to place the
Society’s researches ‘on a wider and firmer basis’.70 Sir Robert
Kane, a vice-president of the Society and author of the celebrated
Industrial Resources of Ireland, praising the liberality of the donor
and the ‘admirable efficiency’ of the lecturers, remarked on ‘how
great a scale the benevolent intentions of the founder of that liberal
endowment’ had been carried out.71 According to. Jonathan Pim,
who became president of the Society (1875–7), the study of
economic questions in Ireland received its first impetus with the
founding of the Whately chair, was added to through the efforts of its
various holders and through the lectures and publications of the
Statistical Society, ‘but yet more by the lectures which, under the
Barrington trust, have been delivered in various parts of Ireland,
diffusing widely a knowledge of these subjects, and popularizing the
abstract principles of statistical science’.72
In his address delivered at the opening of the eleventh session of
the Society, James A.Lawson spoke of the Barrington lectures as
having given to the Society ‘a very extended sphere of usefulness’.
The lectures had been ‘attended with very marked success’ and their
benefit had been twofold:
First, in the diffusion of sound economic knowledge; and
secondly, it has been the means of training up for us in this city
a class of young, educated, able men, fresh from our universities,
who are induced to devote their special attention to the subject
of political economy, and who then propose themselves to us to
be sent out as lecturers for the purpose of carrying out the
administration of this trust.
The council had never encountered any difficulty in finding lecturers
and, in eight years, they had never received a complaint from the
public,73 sentiments Lawson repeated in his address in November
1862.74 in his obituary notice of the Archbishop, Hancock stated that
Whately’s funding of the Trinity chair and Barrington’s bequest were
the ‘two endowments to which our country has been so much
indebted for a diffusion of the knowledge of social science’.75
Finally, both Lord O’Hagan, president of the Statistical Society from
1867–70, and William Huston Dodd, president from 1894–6, were
agreed on the success of the evangelists the Statistical Society, on
behalf of the Barrington trust, had sent out to preach the gospel of
political economy to the plain people of Ireland.76
112
6
‘NEXT TO GODLINESS’
Political economy, Ireland, and ideology
‘Absolute authority’, wrote J.E.Bicheno, the philosophical tourist
who visited Ireland in 1829, ‘is never exercised by brute force alone.
It obtains its ascendancy by appeals to antiquity, established
institutions, the social affections, honour, glory, the weaknesses and
infirmities of our nature, and everything which influences the
imagination’.1 He distinguished between the government of people
through their ‘affections’ and ‘understanding’, claiming that authority
was best exercised over Roman Catholics and the Irish by appealing
to their affections and imagination. However, within three years of
Bicheno’s visit a state-sponsored system of elementary education
was established in Ireland with the firm purpose of enlightening the
darkened intellects of the Irish masses. Education was to play a
crucial role in the pacification of Ireland and in combating Irish
disaffection in the nineteenth century. Education, formal and informal,
set out not only to augment the meagre store of Irish knowledge and
to deplete the impressively abundant holdings of Irish ignorance and
error, but, in effect, to change what was perceived as the Irish
‘character’, to substitute ordered, rational discourse (hence the
teaching of logic in the national schools) for rhetorical excess,
thereby promoting affection for England and the established Church.
W.E.Hearn described protectionism as a ‘killing kindness’, a phrase
which could also be applied to national education in the opinion of
many Irish people. It was perceived as a Greek gift, being at once an
instrument of national advancement and an organ of empire.
Controversial topics were more-or-less excluded from the curriculum
of the national schools (as indeed from the fare on offer from the
Queen’s Colleges, the Statistical Society, the Barrington lectures,
mechanics’ institutes, and all such improving bodies) but the feeling
of establishment figures, such as Whately, was that the ideological
ends of education were achievable by formal means, by the
114 POLITICAL ECONOMY, IRELAND, AND IDEOLOGY
inculcation of habits of disciplined and orderly thought. Central to
this rational education was the new science of political economy, the
dominant mode of English political discourse.
Political economy claimed ideological neutrality and the universal
validity of its laws; modestly descriptive, it saw itself as superseding
previous prescriptive moral and religious discursive modes. Here, at
last, there seemed to be a form of incontrovertible, value-free
knowledge which could adjudicate impartially between all
conflicting social claims, an unprecedented boon to a society so
spectacularly divided as Ireland. Here, at last, was solid, uncontested
ground. In like manner, utilitarianism had attempted to reduce
morality to a descriptive, scientific calculation of utility, without
prescriptive content. In a truly Copernican revolution in morality,
individual hedonism was miraculously transformed into social
utility. The general good was achieved by the principle of laissezfaire, whereby each individual pursued his self-interest. In general, it
was held that the new science of political economy had proved
beyond doubt the coincidence of individual and general interests.
Individual and social utility were to be achieved through the
operation of laissez-faire, and the interests of classes, peoples, and
nations pleasingly coincided. There is an important sense in which it
was only when laissez-faire was seriously challenged that it became
central to economic discussion. Arthur J.Taylor remarks that, unlike
his predecessors ‘for whom the question of laissez-faire had been at
best incidental to the general discussion of economic principles, Mill
set the role of government in the forefront of his argument’.2 We
would argue that the efficacy of laissez-faire, and by extension
political economy, of which it was seen to form an intrinsic part, was
most searchingly and most dramatically questioned as a result of the
Great Famine of 1846–7. It is a considerable irony that the repeal of
the Corn Laws and the first concentrated attack on laissez-faire
happened simultaneously.
During the Famine and for the following decade or so, almost all
Irish political economists defended laissez-faire. But by the end of
the 1850s moral attacks on political economy were being heard more
frequently, even from economists themselves. There was increasing
opposition to the commodification of, for example, education, land,
and labour. The absolute dominion of political economy was called
into question and there was increasing emphasis on what Cliffe
Leslie called the ‘imperious conditions of time and place’.
Methodologically there was a new tendency towards the historical
and comparative and the Irish economists Leslie and Ingram were
pioneers of historical economics in the English-speaking world.
Many writers distinguished Irish conditions from English, so that
economic policies appropriate to one country were not necessarily
appropriate to the other. For some this was a powerful argument for a
repeal of the Union and for various forms of home rule and selfdetermination; for others, such as Mathew Arnold, Ireland’s
difference made up for deficiencies in the English character, so that
the ‘marriage’ of male John Bull and female Hibernia formed a
perfect union.
Though most commentators, including, for instance, Hancock,
Hearn, and Moffett, denied that the Irish character and the Catholic
religion were among the causes of Irish economic backwardness, it
was widely held that, in the words of Sydney Smith, the Irish
character contributed ‘something to retard the improvements of that
country’.3 The general feeling was that Irishness and Catholicism,
especially when combined, were seriously lacking in economic
virtue. Unfortunately the good qualities of the Irish, such as
hospitality and open-handedness, were wasteful ones which militated
against prudence and self-interest, the economic values par
excellence. In 1820 Smith, a generally friendly observer, wrote that
the Irishman had many good qualities:
he is brave, witty, generous, eloquent, hospitable, and openhearted; but he is vain, ostentatious, extravagant, and fond of
display—light in council—deficient in perseverance —without
skill in private or public economy—an enjoyer, not an acquirer
—one who despises the slow and patient virtues—who wants
the superstructure without the foundation—the result without
the previous operation—the oak without the acorn and the three
hundred years of expectation. The Irish are irascible, prone to
debt, and to fight, and very impatient of the restraints of law.
Such a people are not likely to keep their eyes steadily upon the
main chance, like the Scotch or the Dutch.4
If these stereotypes were accepted, clearly the Irish, in Bicheno’s
terms, should be governed through their ‘affections’ rather than their
‘understanding’, and the English establishment and their intellectual
garrison in Ireland made the serious mistake of applying to Ireland a
system which was English, Protestant, individualistic and utilitarian.
In Bicheno’s words, the ‘principle which governs mankind by
reason, is of more modem date, and has grown out of the
improvement of the human race. It relies for its success upon
individual conviction, and appeals to utility, selflove, interest, profit,
abstract truth’. Limited monarchies, he added, and ‘modem
republics, the Protestant religion, govern principally through the
influence upon the understanding. Science, and all inductive
philosophy, mechanics’ institutions, and popular education, rely for
their success upon this foundation’. However, the system of authority
through affections was ‘oldest and most universal’:
[It] has developed the character of man in its noblest of aspects:
it has carried the social virtues to the highest pitch of perfection,
and has crushed the selfish vices: it has nourished honourable
feelings, generosity to the oppressed, charity to the poor,
protection to the weaker sex, and has enabled man to exercise
the most extraordinary self-denial.
The Catholic religion was a ‘striking illustration of the government
of men by their affections’, for it appealed to their ‘imaginations, by
insisting on divine succession, by its splendid hierarchy, its
architectural magnificence, shows, processions, music, pictures,
images, dresses, and ornaments of the church’. Its services were
almost altogether ‘devotional’ and its liturgy ‘animating and
impassioned’. Its pulpit addresses and manuals were not ‘critical or
argumentative, but the preachers and writers aim at the heart, and
wing their arrows with all the sympathies and excitements their
imaginations can supply’.5
Next to religion, Bicheno saw schools as ‘one of the most
powerful levers by which the mass of society in modern times is
moved forward and directed’. Protestant education ministered to the
understanding and had a tendency to ‘magnify selfimportance’ and to
withdraw the child ‘from the influence of social sympathies and
affections’. It gave ‘vigour to a particular class of virtues, those
which conduce especially to his prosperity, and which are well suited
for a commercial and enterprising life’. The Catholic system, on the
other hand, had ‘a tendency to foster virtues of another kind,—
generosity, social affections, fidelity, honour’. English and Protestant
virtues were more appropriate to a mercantile and industrial society,
while those of the Irish and Catholics were more fitted for a feudal or
clan social order. Political economy was the self-knowledge of
bourgeois society, with its rational appeal to the understanding and
with its presuppositions of personal conduct guided by individual
selfinterest. Bicheno condemned the narrowness and immorality of
this approach: ‘To paralyse the noble virtue of charity by the
calculations of prudential reason, or the statistics of political
economy, can never be the wish of any wise or good man’. In terms
of political economy, Bicheno wrote, absenteeism might not have
been injurious to Ireland, but the real evil was that the landlord was
encouraged to treat land as merchandise, and to regard the relation
between himself and his tenantry as ‘little more than that between a
buyer and a seller. The old connection was of a more social nature,
and brought with it a most beneficial influence on all parties’. The
old philanthropy and charity were gone and political economy had
contributed ‘very materially to this great and irreparable mischief’.6
It is potently symbolic that the two erstwhile friends, Richard
Whately and John Henry Newman, never met in the four years (1852–
6) Newman spent in Dublin as Rector of the Catholic University.
Whately, a distinguished exponent of liberal Christianity, was the
great evangelist of rational education and political economy in
Ireland, while Newman, a convert to Catholicism, despised the ‘cold
doctrines of Natural Religion’,7 and described political economy as a
discipline ‘at once dangerous and leading to occasions of sin’.8 In
‘The Tamworth Reading Room’, Newman denounced the view that
scientific and secular knowledge had a considerable effect in
promoting religious truth. He wrote:
This is why Science has so little of a religious tendency;
deductions have no power of persuasion. The heart is
commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the
imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony
of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons
influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds influence
us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be
a martyr for a conclusion.9
It is worth noting that the object of Newman’s scorn was Sir Robert
Peel, who, in a few brief years, was to again become Prime Minister
and to set up the ‘godless’ Queen’s Colleges in Ireland, in opposition
to which the Catholic University was established, with Newman at its
head. It is significant that little political economy was taught at the
Catholic University.
In his book Irish Ideas, published in 1893, William O’Brien stated
tersely a commonly held perception: ‘Sir R.Peel relied on two
instruments to denationalize Ireland—the policeman and the
schoolmaster’.10 But a series of three articles in the United Irishman
in April 1848, significantly entitled ‘Educational Police’, described
national education bluntly as a ‘police system’, the school-room as
the ‘cunning focus of surveillance over the country round about’,
with school inspectors being used as ‘spies’, reporting to the ‘police
office’ in Marlborough Street, under the direction of Whately, the
‘principal agent in the perversion and corruption of this “national
system”’. Whately had converted the national schools into an
instrument for inculcating the ‘doctrines of English imperialism’ and
the ‘Gospel of Mammon’ into schoolchildren,11 and for teaching
them the ‘folly and vice of nationality’.12 But it was not only radical
nationalists who saw teachers as part of what Louis Althusser called
the ‘repressive state apparatus’. Anthony Richard Blake, a
Commissioner of National Education, was asked the following
question when he appeared before a Select Committee of the House
of Commons on Education in Ireland on 17 August 1835: ‘Do you
see any objections, on constitutional grounds, to placing at the
disposition of a Board, acting under the Government, the power of
sending throughout the country an army of intelligent men
disciplined by them, and to a great extent under their control?’ Blake,
a Roman Catholic, had no problems with seeing the body of national
teachers as an ‘army’. He could conceive nothing
in our constitution to prevent so great an improvement, as I
think would be affected by sending forth, through the National
Board, teachers to every part of Ireland; on the contrary, I
consider that the true constitutional principle to be that rather
moral than physical power should be the means of government,
and that this principle would be best called into effect through a
good system of national education, conducted through welleducated and well-disposed teachers; they would be a moral
Police, as useful, I should hope, as the existing constabulary
force.
Blake’s description of national teachers as a ‘moral Police’ force is
obviously the source of the term ‘Educational Police’ in the United
Irishman. Blake believed ‘the more the influence of the teachers is
exercised in support of lawful authority, in promoting constitutional
obedience to constitutional power, the better’.13 The general aim of
the Commissioners was to train ‘a new class of schoolmasters…
whose conduct and influence would be highly beneficial in
promoting morality, harmony, and a good order, in the country parts
of Ireland’. These teachers would be in friendly contact with the
people and ‘identified in interest with the State and therefore anxious
to promote a spirit of obedience to lawful authority’.14 According to
the Commissioners, a national teacher should be
a person of Christian sentiment, of calm temper and discretion;
he should be imbued with a spirit of peace, of obedience to the
law, and loyalty to his Sovereign; he should not only possess the
art of communicating knowledge, but be capable of moulding
the mind of youth, and of giving the power which education
confers a useful direction.15
Next to the church, the school was seen as the most powerful social
institution for the dissemination of ‘correct’ ideas. In the words of
one head inspector, the school was the ‘Vestibule to the temple’.16
Education acted as a ‘preventive to intemperance’,17 not only in the
consumption of drink but in conduct in general and in language, a
necessary prophylactic against Irish violence, lawlessness,
indiscipline, imaginative extravagance, rhetoric; in brief, an imperial
measure against Irish colonial ‘excess’. Properly functioning schools
were seen as allaying ‘social hostilities between class and class, and
sectarian prejudices and antipathies between creed and creed’. In a
country where poverty was ‘arrayed against property, employed
against employer, land against trade, creed against creed’, all of these
differences were ‘blended’ in well-run schools.18 The general feeling
was that this blending was best achieved by excluding controversial
subjects and by teaching the others in a dispassionate and rational
manner. Hence the frequent complaints about the celebrated
‘dryness’ of Irish national school books and the relatively austere
character of primary education. Even singing was treated as a means
of learning the ‘most ennobling, moral, and religious truths’, in the
words of Head Inspector W.H.Newell. ‘I canot help thinking’, he
added,
that if vocal music were generally taught in the National
Schools, the songs learned would supersede those that the
humble classes now generally sing, which are for the most part
vicious trash, hawked about by itinerant ballad-singers; in times
of political excitement too often seditious, and frequently
obscene and demoralizing.19
According to another authority, music could be made more ‘useful if
the children were taught by it a lesson of self-restraint and
subordination’.20 A price, however, had to be paid for this utilitarian
disparagement of the aesthetic. Writing in 1850, William McCreedy
hoped that the Book of Poetry would ‘inoculate’ the children ‘with a
taste for the polite and more humanising parts of our literature, from
which hitherto, unfortunately, many of them have either been entirely
shut out, or so precluded from cultivating as to leave them
unimproved by their softening influences’.21 The problem was that this
softening and humanising, this concern for the allegedly feminine
aesthetic and moral spheres, unfitted people for the public,
competitive, self-interested, male sphere of the market-place.
Wishing to contain the excesses of the Irish character by inculcating
rational knowledge, the establishment was also faced with a severe
dilemma, for it would have been self-contradictory for it to achieve
its ends by rhetorical or aesthetic strategies, but could well be selfdefeating for it to attempt to achieve it by dry, rational means.
By and large the official view was that, in contrast with ‘hedge
schoolmasters’, national teachers were moral, and politically loyal.
The books used in hedge-schools were seen as inculcating disloyalty
and irreverence for the law, consisting, according to various reports,
of tales of rogues, robbers, rapparees, and loose romances. Glorifying
outlawry they scarcely fostered ‘habits of regularity and discipline
which are yet more valuable than mere learning’.22 The
Commissioners of National Education produced their own textbooks
and distributed them gratis or sold them cheaply, thereby introducing
conformity throughout the system and encouraging loyalty and
respect for the law.23 The monopoly enjoyed by the Commissioners
in the supply of books was objected to on laissez-faire grounds by
the publishers Longman and Murray, while critics like Myles
O’Reilly MP considered this ‘virtual imposition’ as exerting ‘an evil
political influence upon the people’,24 and Canon Toole, an English
witness before the 1870 Royal Commission, spoke of it as ‘limiting
intellect’.25 This glozing over of differences, at once utilitarian and
imperial, led Patrick Pearse to denounce the intermediate education
system introduced in 1879 as the ‘murder machine’ which ‘took
absolutely no cognisance of the differences between localities, of the
differences between urban and rural communities, of the differences
springing from a different ancestry, Gaelic or Anglo-Saxon’.26
Paramount among all of the differences that were denied by the
system of national education was that of nationality; Ireland was
identified with England, and the coincidence of their interests
assumed.
With reference to the national school-books, Assistant
Commissioner Coward reported that
it was of their un-Irish character that I heard most complaint
made. The absence of any mention of Irish history in books
intended to teach the inhabitants of Ireland was regarded as an
attempt to destroy the feeling of nationality, and was the only
feature which provoked much resentment.27
There was controversy from time to time over a song, ‘The English
Child’, in Hullah’s Manual which was provided to teachers who
were qualified to teach singing. The opening stanza was as follows:
I thank the goodness and the grace
That on my birth have smiled,
And made me, in these Christian days,
A happy English child.28
From an Irish perspective the shortcomings of the system were best
recorded by perhaps the most able Inspector of all, P.J. Keenan, in
his invaluable General Report for 1855. ‘We are’, he wrote, ‘quietly
but certainly destroying the national legend, national music, and
national language of the country’, and Irish history was all but ‘entirely
neglected’.29 The Second Book of Lessons unproblematically
informed children that Ireland and England were ‘called one
nation’,30 indeed Whately himself and his family had an
extraordinary input into the composition and revision of the Reading
Books,31 and the contents reproduced his assimilationist views. ‘I
have’, said Whately, ‘always looked upon Ireland as a part of my
own country’; he wanted Ireland to become ‘a really valuable portion
of the British Empire, instead of a sort of morbid excrescence’.32
According to the entry on Whately in Webb’s Compendium of Irish
Biography, he was ‘thorough’ in his opposition to ‘Repeal and in the
advocacy of centralization. He favoured the abolition of the
Viceroyalty, of the Irish office, and of everything that tended to
perpetuate a feeling of distinct nationality in Ireland.’33 No wonder
Whately regarded his ‘small and unpretending’ publications as of
‘more real importance than his larger works’.34
Assimilation for Whately had also a religious dimension. In a
famously controversial statement, reported by Nassau Senior,
Whately said that
mixed education is gradually enlightening the mass of the
people…if we give it up, we give up the only hope of weaning
the Irish from the abuses of Popery. I cannot openly support the
Education Board as an instrument of conversion. I have to fight
its battles with one hand, and that my best, tied behind me.35
That the desire for religious assimilation might conflict with other
forms of assimilation is best illustrated by the case of the
establishment of a Professorship of Irish at Trinity College Dublin in
1835. A majority of the Board, ‘under certain Limitations’, approved
of its foundation in order to ‘promote the Civilization of the Irish
Peasantry, and facilitate the preaching of the established Religion’.
However, Dr Robert Phipps opposed the measure chiefly because
‘the difference of Language is one of the chief Distinctions between
the English & Irish Nations, whereas to identify them as far as possible
is most desirable’.36
The Irish educational system, formal and informal, sought to
exclude religious proselytism and political controversy. There is no
doubt that the ‘civilization’ of various classes of Irish people was
thereby promoted but the ideological price to be paid (sometimes
willingly) for the interdiction on controversial subjects was a defence
of the status quo, making it unquestioned and unquestionable.
Dryness was ideologically conservative. But people like Whately felt
that their ideological projects would best be achieved by making the
Irish more rational, thus counteracting superstition in religion and
the innate tendency of the Irish to lawlessness and violence and
fortifying them against the rhetoric of agitators. In the economic
sphere rationality consisted in behaving in an individualist, selfinterested way. Hence logical thought and rational behaviour
combined to change the character of the Irish: stern English logic
was to repress Irish rhetoric and the manly ethic of strenuous
competition was to replace a morally admirable (in traditional terms)
but economically unproductive ethic of self-abnegation and altruism.
Celebrated Irish economic improvidence was paralleled in discursive
areas by a similar lack of foresight, where, to quote a distinguished
schools inspector’s characterisation of a certain widespread
‘incidental mode of teaching’, there was no ‘predestined march’
chalked out but rather movement ‘without goal or starting point’ in a
‘sort of zig-zag, winding, and uncertain route’. Such ‘flexibility and
quickness of association’, though ‘very valuable mental habits’, were
inferior to ‘solidity and coherence of thought’ and could degenerate
into ‘giddiness of mind’ or a ‘wandering wit’.37 Disturbed by the
perceived indirection and want of linearity of the Irish, Whately’s
mission was to make these crooked ways straight and rough ways
smooth.
In the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Primary Education in
Ireland in 1870 some commissioners, especially William Brooke,
found excessive emphasis on the wickedness of the English, not only
in Ireland but also in North America and India, in the textbooks of
the Christian Brothers.38 These school-books were also found
wanting for insufficiently adverting to the ‘blessings, the advantages
of the British Constitution’ and for the ‘constant praises of
insurrection against power’.39 Lord Erskine’s speech in defence of
John Stockdale, for example, was seen by Brooke as politically
tendentious, but Brother John Augustin Grace, the head of the
Richmond Street School, who was being examined, denied political
intent and defended its inclusion on aesthetic grounds. ‘I think the
passage is magnificent’, stated Grace. It had, added Grace, been
selected ‘not to impress the minds of the pupils with any political
idea, but for the same reason that all literary classbooks have such
selections, namely, for the purpose of teaching elocution’.40 Brooke
saw that the power of such passages politically lay in their ability to
‘stimulate the feelings’.41 He had no doubt about the effect of the
‘most eloquent passages of the most eloquent men’, the ‘highly
eloquent language’, the ‘very beautiful poetry’, on impressionable
children, and he was especially obsessed by the frequent repetition of
such passages, as the pupils of the Christian Brothers often learned
them ‘off by heart’.42 These passages, Grace replied, ‘are of great
literary merit, and as such have been selected as models of style for
our literary class-book’.43 Brooke noted that moral lessons in the
school-books were usually culled from religious, political, and
forensic advocacy, where cases were being argued and passions
appealed to and were thus, in his view, inappropriate sources of
history. Whereas the national school-books were largely dry and noncontroversial, Brooke and others found those of the Christian
Brothers, in terms of their content, inflammatory. In general terms
national school-books were seen as ministering to the understanding,
those of the Christian Brothers to the affections. No wonder Anthony
Blake thought the mode of teaching of the Brothers not ‘sufficiently
scientific’, as it did not ‘work the mind sufficiently’.44 In the matter
of ‘scientific’ education, Cardinal Cullen agreed with Newman in
rejecting mechanics’ institutes as ‘nothing but schools of infidelity’,
though they were encouraged by the government.45 in like manner
Hayes, in his introduction to the Ballads of Ireland, lamented the
change from the days when the ‘rustic Schoolmaster’ was chosen
‘more for his skill in the muses than for his acquaintance with the
doctrines of Political Economy’.46 And Patrick Pearse’s dismissal of
political economy as rational, calculating, and English is in this
tradition: ‘Ye men and peoples burn your books of rent theories and
land values and go back to your sagas’.47 In Bicheno’s terms, the
practice of the Christian Brothers, the preferences of Hayes and
Pearse, as well as, for example, the Young Ireland project of a ballad
history of Ireland, testify to an acceptance of the view that the Irish
were best governed according to their affections.
Several commentators, including people within the system, saw
the limitations of the abstract universalism which informed national
education in Ireland, as entailing a denial of Irish difference, whether
political, social, economic, or cultural. In concrete terms this
involved the effacement of the ‘history of the people’, their ‘poetry,
habits, and manners’ and their ‘individuality as a nation of ancient
race’.48 Keenan, in particular, regretted the virtual absence of music,
especially Irish music, in the schools. Hullah’s system of music had
no ‘national character’. There must be, continued Keenan,
a homeliness in tunes as well as in words, if they are to touch
the heart; and we are abandoning a great humanizing power we
have at our command, when we disregard the natural
homeliness of the strains hummed by a mother over the cradle
and substitute in their stead tunes that are foreign to all
sympathy, that belong to no country, that are sung in no home,
that are inelegant in their style, and cheerless in their effects
upon the ear.49
Here national music is seen as the bearer of humane, family,
specifically female values of the home. It was appropriate that
Keenan should single out music in his critique of the curriculum, as
music has traditionally been regarded as having little or no conceptual
content but as wielding powerful influence over the affections. For
similar reasons Keenan regretted the lack of the Irish language and of
Irish history in the national school curriculum.50 He wanted a system
of elementary education that appealed both to the understanding and
to the affections.
Whately remarked, conventionally, in his Rhetoric that the
‘language of savages’, among whom he would include most of the
native Irish, was ‘highly metaphorical’.51 A major part of Whately’s
project was to curb this linguistic excess, to bring this affective
language to heel in the name of intellect. He had, his first biographer
tells us, a ‘doric contempt for ornament’, never appealing to the
heart, whether addressing adults or children, for ‘all his efforts aimed
to convince the intellect’. With reference to the early education of
children Whately had been heard to say: ‘Speak to their reason; you
can always make them comprehend what is fit for them to know; my
children know nothing they do not understand’.52 Predictably, he had
a lower opinion of learning by heart, than had the Christian
Brothers.53 With reference to political economy, the rational science
par excellence, he concluded that its principles ‘could be explained
even to the ploughmen and made clear to the comprehension of
children’, just like the gospel itself. No wonder Dublin Protestants
‘would not, or could not appreciate him’.54 It was a rhetorical
commonplace that the human voice was far more persuasive than
words upon a page, and the Irish were seen as pre-eminently an oral
people. Indeed a main function of the national schools was to combat
the effects of the rhetoric of agitators on the public. Significantly,
inspectors of schools often reported that oral answering among
teachers was markedly better than was the written.55 Bicheno
distinguished between Catholic preaching, which was ‘striking and
energetic’ and the ‘cold official reading of the established clergy’.56
And Fitzpatrick found Whately’s austere linguistic practices ‘a great
disadvantage in Ireland’, for rhetoric was a ‘particularly acceptable
gift to the Irish, who are a speaking rather than a reading people’,57
Rhetoric, in the narrow sense, the art of persuading the will, was
much practised in Ireland, but Whately saw the convincing of the
understanding as an essential part of persuasion. It might be argued
that the typical English view of language was as representational and
reflectionist of the ‘real’, whereas the Irish sought in language a
fullness not to be found in harsh Irish reality, and a realm of freedom
and pleasure unjustified by existing Irish conditions. For the Irish,
language did not merely obsequiously and oppressively reflect the
real, it foreshadowed future plenitude. England, the possessors,
needed only to understand the world; the Irish, dispossessed, needed
urgently to change it. So the colonial relationship between the two
countries had its linguistic correlative. Hence a main purpose of the
educational system was to restrain this linguistic excess and to
replace an allegedly primitive form of thought with a more rational
and scientific mode. The assimilationist process was never fully
realised. In William O’Brien’s words, the ‘policeman proved to be an
efficient ally of England, but the schoolmaster did not turn out so
satisfactorily, and the schoolmaster is the more potent man of the two
when all is said and done’.58 And Samuel Ferguson, author of
‘Inheritor and Economist: A Poem’, saw Whately as having been
taught a not particularly easy lesson, not only in morality but in
forms of knowledge in his ‘Epitaph on Archbishop Whately’:
Here lie I, Richard Whately
Archbishop of Dublin lately,
Who, for the amelioration
Of the ignorant Irish nation,
Coming hither with much vain knowledge,
Having learned in these poor people’s college
Some things that have been a boon to me.
I taught quibble
And I learnt the Bible;
I brought ability
And took away humility.59
According to a Royal Commission of 1861, next to religion, the
‘knowledge most important to a labouring man’ was political
economy.60 Whately himself had written in 1833 that if the ‘lower
orders’ had been taught political economy, they would not be ‘as
now, liable to the misleading of every designing demagogue’ and
would also have been rendered more ‘provident’ in their ways.61 In a
letter to a friend in the same year he wrote that ‘perhaps the sort of
thing most wanted now for children and the poor, is some plain
instructions in Political Economy’.62 Such was Whately’s belief in
the efficacy of political economy that at a meeting of the Statistical
Society held on 19 June 1848, ‘a moment when all Ireland was
drilling, and Dublin seemed like a slumbering volcano, the
Archbishop propounded a panacea against the threatened siege’. That
panacea was political economy, and he urged Young Ireland to study
it.63 At that meeting Whately spoke of political economy as the ‘only
means which existed of rescuing the country from convulsion’. He
then made the extraordinary statement, especially by an Archbishop,
that in a crucial sense, political economy was more important than
religion or morality:
It was a mistake to suppose that religion or morals alone would
be sufficient to save a people from revolution. No; they would
not be sufficient, if a proper idea of Political Economy was not
cultivated by that people. A man, even of the purest mind and
most exalted feelings, without a knowledge of Political
Economy, could not be secured from being made instrumental
in forwarding most destructive and disastrous revolutions.
Though he claimed that next to ‘sound religion, sound Political
Economy was most essential to the well-being of society’, he was
only too aware of the social and political dangers of unfettered
charity and benevolence.64
Even as early as 1833, Hugh Hamill, a schools’ inspector from
Cork, made a powerful plea for political economy as a tranquillising
force in Ireland:
One Subject more I beg leave to suggest to the Board,—
Political Economy. I wish it were properly taught in every
School in the Kingdom. The Title is a formidable one; nor should
I wish it introduced under that Name; if so it probably would
not succeed. I believe that, next to good Religious Education, a
sound Knowledge of Political Economy would tend as much to
tranquillize this Country, if not more, than any other Branch of
Knowledge that can be taught in Schools. Were a Knowledge
of this Science more diffused I should not have heard such
exciting or disquieting Doctrines as I did during the Summer,
speciously supported too, as far as regards the Working and
Middle Classes; the natural and inevitable Distinction of
Ranks, —the Dependence of Classes and of Countries on each
other.65
Hamill’s views were shared by other inspectors. Patton wrote of the
‘great prominence’ he gave political economy and of the ‘importance’
he attached to a knowledge of its principles ‘which appeared so
important and necessary’ for the children to know ‘as occurring in
some way or other in all the ordinary transactions of civilized life’.66
It was generally agreed among educationalists that ignorance or error
in political economy had social consequences much more serious
than in other disciplines. At the training institution at Marlborough
Street political economy was taught which was ‘plain, practical, and
corrective of popular prejudices’.67 According to McCreedy, among
the truths revealed by political economy were ‘the necessity that
exists for security of individual property, and how thence there must
necessarily spring up differences of wealth and rank’, the folly as
well as crime sometimes committed in interfering with the ‘free
employment’ of capital. The ‘correction and exposure of many
pernicious economic sophisms’ was a prime function of political
economy. ‘All these’, concluded McCreedy,
it must be acknowledged, are matters of the deepest interest,
upon which it is most desirable all men should entertain correct
views; for as misunderstanding and error in reference to them
have often given rise to turbulence and confusion, so it may be
expected the right apprehension of them, and the diffusion
among a people of true ideas of their nature, may have a
contrary effect, and tend powerfully to the preservation of
security and order.68
The early writings on political economy in Ireland in the nineteenth
century emphasised its strictly scientific credentials; it was, in
Whately’s words, a science of wealth, having no connection with
‘virtue and happiness’.69 its laws were of universal applicability and
did not respect mere political boundaries. Having ‘a science of
exchanges peculiar in Ireland, under the name of Irish Political
Economy’ was, in the words of Hancock, ‘about as reasonable as
proposing to have Irish mechanics, Irish mathematics, or Irish
astronomy’.70 Longfield defended political economy as a ‘pure
science’, like trigonometry, having no political objectives or
tendencies.71 Its principles, maintained Pim, were ‘natural laws
which regulate the material interest of society’ and which were
therefore ‘fixed and unchangeable as the principles of any other
science’.72 Numerous other examples could be given.
Many authors devoted considerable energy to defending the
alleged fact that political economy was non-political. Politics was the
place of turmoil, division, and of passion, whereas political economy
was an oasis of calm rationality, a place of harmony rather than of
conflict, and, in a frequently-used metaphor, an uncontested
‘common ground’. Whately himself held that ‘party politics’ had
about ‘as much to do with Political Economy as they had with
manufactures or agriculture’.73 The Statistical Society frequently
congratulated itself on replacing divisive political discourse with the
healing discursive mode of political economy. In 1854 the Council of
the Society reported that in the seven years of its existence there had
been ‘an increasing tendency in the public mind, to remove social
questions from the domain of party politics to the more tranquil
region of scientific research’.74 The same year, Pim spoke
approvingly of ‘that alteration in public feeling which has
disconnected political economy from party politics’75 A year later
Longfield wrote that the continuing existence of the Society of itself
afforded ‘a sufficient proof of the possibility of uniting Irishmen of
all creeds and parties in one common object’.76 Lawson remarked that
free trade would have been considered as a political question in
1847, but by 1858 its principles were not to be disputed, having now
become the ‘very alphabet of economic science’. The Statistical
Society had ‘supplied the wholesome food of rational discussion
instead of the unwholesome diet of party politics’. It was ‘a common
ground upon which Irishmen of every sect, class, and creed can
meet, to discuss those questions which bear upon the welfare of their
fellow countrymen, in a spirit of amity, peace, and concord’.77 This
theme was frequently reiterated by members of the Society:
When our lot has been cast in a land so divided by party and
religious differences as Ireland, it is a matter of no small
importance to have a Society where men of all parties and of
various religious denominations can cordially work together in
investigating and discussing important social questions.78
In Thomas O’Hagan’s words, a ‘spirit of rhetorical exaggeration’,
inseparable from political discourse, was being replaced by the
‘simplicity and directness of those who honestly seek to know things
as they are’, those with ‘an ever growing sense of the value of
economic truth’. The Society was not only ‘a union of classes’ but
also of ‘creeds and parties’, according to O’Hagan, and it had
‘proved that, for Irishmen, there is common ground, in connexion
with questions of high public moment, on which they can stand
together, in perfect amity, whilst they hold firmly by the antagonistic
religious and political confessions to which they are respectively
attached’.79 According to Sir Robert Kane, only by degrees did the
principles of political economy manage to extricate themselves from
the ‘mire of political discussion’ and be considered ‘upon purely
scientific grounds’.80 And, to give one final example, Jonathan Pim,
in his presidential address in 1876 said it had been the object of the
Statistical Society ‘to offer to thinking men of all creeds and parties
the opportunity for discussing on common ground all questions
relating to the wellbeing of Ireland which are not governed by party
or sectarian considerations’.81
Political economy, as a form of irrefutable knowledge, imposed
intellectual consensus and, overwhelmingly, presented existing social
and economic relations in Ireland as harmonious and beneficent.
Arthur Houston held that it was the ‘glory of Political Economy to
have shown that the true and ultimate interest of the community’ was
‘inseparably bound up with that of the individual’.82 in like manner
the interests of classes, such as those of employers and employees,
landlords and tenants, were seen to coincide, as did the interests of
nations, the ultimate basis for the doctrine of free trade. Through the
agency of competition, individual, class, and national interests
spontaneously coincided with one another and with the general
interest through the automatic and dispassionate operation of the
market mechanism, through laissez-faire, rather than through
regulative state agency. Irish economists were particularly anxious to
reject the class conflict which was implicit in classical theory, and
Ricardo was their bête noire. In the very first paper delivered to the
Statistical Society, Lawson opposed the Ricardian analysis of wages
and profits which represented the interests of the employer and
labourer as ‘diametrically opposed to each other’, preferring Senior’s
view of the matter where wages and profits rose and fell together.83
In the second paper to the Society, delivered on the same night as
Lawson’s (21 December), at the end of ‘Black ‘47’, when the Great
Famine was at its height, Hancock argued that the interests of
provision dealers and those of the community were ‘identical’.84
Though he was soon to change his views, in his first paper before the
Society, Cliffe Leslie attacked Mill’s view of the ‘antagonism of the
interests of capitalist and laborer’, a view Leslie found ‘unscientific
as well as mischievous’.85 Before the late 1850s and early 1860s
almost all Irish economists would have agreed with Hearn that the
‘principle of competition’ was ‘beneficent, just and equalizing’.86
There was virtual consensus that the laws of political economy were
universally valid and that a political economy appropriate to England
applied with equal force to Ireland.
There was an opposing tradition in political economy, as in other
discursive areas, that Ireland was different, that in a word frequently
used by nineteenth-century observers, Ireland was an anomaly.
Ireland seemed to confound all received (usually English) wisdom.
We have already mentioned the widespread view that the laws of
political economy did not apply to Ireland, a position which attracted
many more adherents in the wake of the Great Famine. There was an
increasing perception that the Irish economy and society differed
from the English, leading to the conclusion that English economic
theories and policies were not necessarily appropriate to Ireland.
Political economy was regarded as of English origin, and its laws,
increasingly, were seen as having English rather than universal
applicability. In Cairnes’s words, Great Britain, ‘if not the birthplace
of political economy, has at least been its early home, as well as the
scene of the most signal triumphs of its manhood’.87 Even the
unimpeachably orthodox Hearn admitted that ‘much of the
opposition to political economy has been due to the very natural, or
at least very British desire of some of its earlier teachers to generalize
from British phenomena alone’.88
In more general terms, many commentators drew attention to
anomalies in Irish conditions and Irish ‘character’. Bicheno declared
that he had
long harboured the desire of visiting a country, which
contradicted the received theory of population, and the
established doctrines of political economists; where, contrary to
experience, the higher and lower orders profess different
religions; and whence spring as Pliny says of Africa in his time
all the marvellous and unaccountable contradictions of nature.
Ireland is therefore, to the moral and political philosopher what
Australia is to the naturalist, —a land of strange anomalies.89
In 1845 the Revd J.Godkin wrote of the ‘anomalies of the social
condition of Ireland’,90 and a number of years later Harriet Martineau
referred to the ‘anomalous condition of Ireland’.91 These, and many
other writers, were usually drawing attention to the contradiction
between the rich natural endowments of Ireland and the degradation,
economic, moral, and intellectual of its people, a matter that was
sometimes explained by the presence of, in the words of the Revd
F.F.Trench, ‘something anomalous in the Irish character’.92 To an
economist, to use Hancock’s words, the ‘contrast between a destitute
peasantry and prolific resources suggests an investigation into the
social arrangements of the country, where such an anomaly prevails’.
But such inquiries vindicated the Irish from the charge of ‘general
indolence’ by ‘showing that such anomalies arise from the social
arrangements transmitted from less enlightened ages’ which were at
variance with the teachings of political economy.93 Similarly, Hearn
rejected the idea that there was something ‘inherent in the Roman
Catholic religion, and in the Celtic race’ which presented ‘an
insuperarable bar to industrial progress’, though there were people to
be found
who will gravely argue that the Irishman is an anomaly; that his
case is utterly hopeless; that the laws which actuate all other
men are not for him; that he does not care to gain the comforts
of life; that he is lazy, improvident, and idle.94
Where it was accepted, as it increasingly was, that Irish conditions
were anomalous, this provided justification for differences in
legislation, especially with respect to the role of the state. As H.M.
Posnett put it, the ‘peculiar conditions of Ireland have enabled
economists to treat State interference as purely exceptional’.95 To
take one example, Professor William Nesbitt of Galway submitted an
article on education to the Westminster Review, the editor of which,
John Chapman, wrote to Nesbitt’s friend Cairnes, that the condition
for acceptance of the article was:
That state interference with education shall not be advocated as
right in principle and shall only be justified in practice with
reference to Ireland as an exceptional instance, the duty in this
instance being alleged to rise out of the conditions resulting
from the peculiar and exceptional relations of the Conquerors
and Conquered.96
Indeed it was precisely this relationship that was at the heart of
Ireland’s anomalous position. Was Ireland a colony or an intrinsic
part of the United Kingdom? With reference to Ireland, was England
a ‘mother country’ or a ‘sister kingdom? Calling for the ‘assimilation
of the laws and institutions of the two countries’, for the purpose of
‘incorporating Ireland more thoroughly, more completely, into that
glorious Empire’, Henry L.Jephson wrote with some insight on
Ireland’s ‘anomalous position’. Ireland occupied a ‘perfectly unique
position in the British Empire’. It was an ‘incontrovertible fact’ that
amongst the numerous dependencies of the British crown there
is not one that stands in the same relation to Great Britain as
Ireland does. She is not a colony, for although she is governed
by a governor-general, as they are, she has not her own houses
of representatives as colonies have. She cannot be regarded as
an integral part of the United Kingdom, for although she sends
her representatives to the Imperial Parliament, she is not
governed as the other parts of the United Kingdom are, but is
governed by a deputy. Ireland hangs as it were between union
and colonial independence; and this anomalous position lends
on the one hand an aspect of intelligibility to the demands put
forward for placing Ireland on the footing of a colony, and
granting her a colonial constitution; whilst on the other hand it
prevents the only conclusive answer being given to such
demands—the answer that Ireland has been thoroughly and
completely united to Great Britain, and that consequently no
higher privileges remain to be granted to her.
There were, continued Jephson, such differences between English
and Irish legislation and government ‘that Ireland appears almost as
if she were a separate country, and the practice of separate legislation
is so uniform that one might almost believe that it is intended she
shall remain a separate country’, at a time when, ‘in imperial
interests, every effort should be made to draw the two countries
closer to each other’.97
Many observers came to the conclusion that Ireland was not so
much anomalous, as different from England in a wide range of areas
and that the English economy and society did not necessarily
constitute a universally valid model. It was increasingly felt that a
political economy generated from English circumstances and ideas
was quite inappropriate to Irish conditions. From the 1850s onwards
there was increased emphasis on what Cliffe Leslie called, in 1852,
the ‘imperious conditions of time and place’.98 Several authors
emphasised the difference, in Kane’s words, between the ‘true
abstract science of political economy’ and the art of political
economy, and that the application of the ‘strict principles of science
to real life’ should be ‘subject to modifications which local
circumstances will always indicate’. Kane went on to speak of ‘those
local conditions, separating practice from theory’ but he felt that with
‘industrial and moral progress’ these differences would disappear,
bringing about an increasing harmony between ‘practice and
science’. But before such an eventuality, Kane condemned as
‘utopian’ the belief that ‘we can at any time apply the rigorous
dogmas of abstract political economy to human society, regardless of
personal and local habits, and even prejudices’,99 in 1865 Thomas
O’Hagan argued against ‘a too trenchant application of economic
principle to the management of Ireland’ because ‘our circumstances
are in many respects, abnormal. Our society is studded all over with
anomalies’.100 He was more positive than Kane in that he celebrated
national differences and condemned the ‘undistinguishing passion for
assimilation which has possessed the minds of able men—sometimes,
from the rigidity of theorists and the intolerance of doctrinaires’.101
Even a thorough assimilationist like Jephson demurred at laying
down ‘an invariable rule that all legislation for Ireland should be
absolutely identical with English legislation’.102 By 1869 even the
Lord Lieutenant, Lord Spencer, felt safe in saying to the Statistical
Society with reference to political economy that
abstract theories are much dreaded by politicians. They do not
like the application of mere abstract theories, and they are quite
right to be afraid of their universal application, for I believe the
principles of political economy can never be applied
universally. You must consider the position of the country, the
state and progress of the people, before you apply its
principles.103
And, as we saw, even the conservative Hearn came to speak of the
‘error’ in political economy of generalising ‘from British phenomena
alone’.104
The most celebrated confrontation of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ versions
of political economy took place in the House of Commons. The topic
of debate was, significantly, Irish land. In the discussion of
Maguire’s Motion (10 March 1868), Mill clashed with Robert Lowe,
a staunch defender of traditional political economy. Lowe held the
view that political economy ‘belongs to no nation; it is of no
country’.105 in reply to Lowe, Mill remarked that to his
right hon. Friend’s mind political economy appears to stand for
a set of political maxims…my right hon. Friend thinks that a
maxim of political economy if good in England must be good
in Ireland…I am sure that no one is at all capable of
determining what is the right political economy for any country
until he knows the circumstances.106
The abstract and unhistorical nature of the subject came under
increasing attack. What began as a polemical onslaught on political
economy during the Famine was now becoming a theorised and
systematic critique, which was soon to lead to a fundamental
methodological challenge to classical orthodoxy. In and around
1847, charges of abstraction against the science were frequently
made. In the words of one such critic, ‘sciolists of political economy
having got a conception of one or two abstract truths…insist that
they, and they only, are the fitting prescriptions for Ireland’.107 By
1881 Gladstone was uttering what was then conventional wisdom
when he condemned those who applied the ‘principles of abstract
political economy to the people and circumstances of Ireland’ exactly
as if they ‘had been proposing to legislate for the inhabitants of
Saturn and Jupiter’.108 Even as early as 1870, and again with
reference to Irish land, Lowe had relented on his universalism: ‘the
principles of political economy! Why, we violate them every day!’109
Ingram excoriated the ‘vicious abstraction’ of political economy in
his famous address to the British Association in 1878,110 and his
friend Cliffe Leslie had already claimed that its new philosophic
method had to be historical. At least in the English-speaking world,
Ireland was the first country where the universality of the laws of
political economy was systematically challenged. Leslie and Ingram
were the pioneers of historical economics in the English-speaking
world, and the almost inextricable problems of Ireland and land were
at its very source. As a modern scholar puts it, ‘from the late 1850s
until his premature death in 1882, T.E.Cliffe Leslie’s efforts to solve
the problems of Ireland produced a critique of political economy that
laid the chief intellectual foundations for English historical
economics’.111 What is less well known is that Cairnes, from a very
different standpoint, launched a devastating attack on the universalist
pretensions of orthodox economics, in an analysis, both extensive
and intensive, of Ireland and its tribulations, over-whelmingly the
problem of land.
During and after the Famine the laws of political economy (by
which was usually meant the policy of laissez-faire, seen as an
intrinsic part of the science) were attacked for being abstract,
unhistorical, and for being misapplied in Ireland,112 and as not
applying to Ireland’s anomalous general condition or to the specific
circumstances of the famine period. But almost all of the
practitioners of political economy (with the partial exception of Butt)
would have agreed with Hancock that there was ‘no country in the
world which affords a stronger proof of the disastrous consequences
of neglecting the doctrine of laissez-faire as Ireland’.113 Three years
later, Edward Lysaght said that all economists of reputation, with the
exception of Mill (who was at that time frequently criticised by Irish
economists such as Hancock, Leslie, and Hearn) were agreed ‘in
attributing the wretched state of agriculture in Ireland to the absence,
rather than to the excess of competition’. For the same reasons
Lysaght castigated the Irish Tenant League for violating the
‘principles of economic science’.114 But by 1865 Hancock had
relented on his doctrinaire views, referring to the ‘rigid economists of
the laissez faire school’.115 So too did Lawson. Writing in 1872 he
noted that laissez-faire ‘was not very long ago the doctrine of the
economists’ but that the current had now ‘set in the opposite
direction’. He did not say that they had ‘as yet advanced too far upon
this road’, though he advised caution.116 Henry Dix Hutton wrote, in
1870, that the Irish land question had confirmed the ‘impossibility,
now recognized, of reforming the relation of landlord and tenant in
Ireland by the English system, or economic laissez-faire’.117 Ingram
found that existing economists of the English school isolated
economics from other social studies, were excessively deductivist,
abstract, and absolutist in their conclusions. The ‘most marked
example the economists have afforded of a too absolute conception
and presentation of principle,’ declared Ingram, ‘both theoretic and
practical, is found in the doctrine of laissez-faire’.118 Cairnes
observed mordantly that political economy was commonly seen as ‘a
sort of scientific rendering’ of the maxim laissez-faire, the ‘one and
sufficient solution of all industrial problems’. But he argued that
laissez-faire had ‘no scientific basis whatever’ and was ‘at best a
mere handy rule of practice’ which was ‘totally destitute of all
scientific authority’.119 But the reputation of political economy itself
declined concomitantly with that of laissez-faire. To take but one
example, in a short paper which he presented to the Statistical
Society in 1879, entitled ‘Causes of slow progress of political
economy’, Samuel Haughton reported that the discipline had not of
late ‘made progress in public estimation, nor can it be placed in rank,
by its most ardent admirers, as a science of which the laws—it may
almost be said any one law—are undoubted or capable of positive
proof’.120 The widespread perception, and not only in Ireland, was
that the 1870 Irish Land Act had begun and the 1881 Irish Land Act
completed the violation of the laws of political economy, of laissezfaire, of contract, and of private property, especially in land.
Even when political economy was at its most flourishing in
Ireland, there was occasional unease expressed at its ‘narrowness’
and at treating social phenomena exclusively in terms of its
doctrines. In 1830 Bicheno warned against ‘that narrow treatment’ of
the Irish question which regarded it ‘as one of political economy’, the
theories of which were built on the ‘narrow basis of national wealth’
and so were of ‘insignificant importance when applied practically to
the actual circumstances of a country’.121 Lawson pointed out to the
Statistical Society in 1858 that before 1856 the ‘Section of Statistical
and Economic Science’ of the British Association had been known as
the ‘Section of Statistics’ and dedicated itself very much to the ‘mere
collection of facts’, being consequently ‘comparatively barren of
useful results’. He pointed out proudly that their own Society had
borne the new title for all of its ten years of existence.122 Though
named initially the Dublin Statistical Society, it was established for
the purpose of ‘promoting the study of Statistics and Economical
Science’. Indeed the first paper read to the Society was by Lawson
himself and was entitled ‘On the connection between statistics and
political economy’.123 In 1855 the Society (founded in 1847)
amalgamated with the Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, which it had
set up in 1850 when, in Lawson’s words, ‘it was deemed that our
Society had laid down limits too narrow for itself’.124 In 1862 the
Society became the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland,
extending its remit to include ‘Jurisprudence and Amendment of the
Law’ and ‘Public health and Sanitary reform’, and ‘Statistics and
Economical Science’ was broadened to become ‘Social Science,
including Education; and Political Economy, including the principles
of trade and commerce’.125 Indeed the council of the Society boasted
in 1860 that they had the honour of being the ‘earliest society in the
empire formed for the cultivation of the entire range of Social
Science’.126 The Society could, according to Lawson, ‘claim the
credit of having been the first society established in these kingdoms
for the cultivation of social science, and we had been at full work for
many years when the National Association for the Promotion of
Social Science was formed’. 127 John Barrington stipulated that the
lectures which he endowed should be on ‘political economy in its most
extended and useful sense, but particularly as relates to the conduct
and duty of people to one another’.128 But in 1870 the council of the
Statistical Society resolved ‘to enlarge the subject of the lectures by
adopting the name of “Lectures on Social Science”, which at the
present day corresponds with the intention of the testator’.129 Clearly,
the reduction of the curiously singular ‘Irish Question’ to the
exclusively economic dimension, and the treatment of economic
problems in isolation from their social, political, and cultural
contexts, were, from the beginning, highly problematic strategies in
Ireland.
In the proceedings of the Statistical Society itself speakers often
dealt with the alleged ‘narrowness’ of political economy. In 1849
Longfield considered the objection that it had ‘confined the attention
of its votaries too exclusively to wealth, and that there was something
dangerous in that narrowness of their views’. He conceded the
position if such people devoted themselves solely to a study of the
science.130 in 1851 Kane objected strongly to the narrow conception
of political economy ‘having for its object a gross and mundane
avarice, which would subordinate every consideration of country and
of culture to the mere grovelling art of money getting’. But he was
glad that the Statistical Society had adopted for its object the
‘comprehensive definition of statistical and economical science’.131
The once narrowly-focused Neilson Hancock claimed that Adam
Smith’s commitment to moral philosophy and jurisprudence in his
Wealth of Nations added ‘extraordinary value to his book’, for he
treated ‘economic science always as a part, and not as the whole of
the scientific considerations connected with human affairs’.132 in like
manner Ingram, the disciple of Comte, praised Smith for not
separating politics, jurisprudence, and political economy; for being,
in effect, a precursor of sociology.133 And Samuel Haughton
attributed the decline in status of political economy in the late 1870s
to, in part, the ‘over-estimate of many writers and advocates, who
assume for this science a position of eminence or control over human
affairs’. He concluded that political economy should properly be
subservient to the emerging science of sociology.134
Objections to political economy, and especially to laissez-faire,
were overwhelmingly moral. Whately defined the discipline as an
enquiry into the ‘nature, production, and distribution of wealth, not
its connection with virtue and happiness’, and this remained the view
of Irish economists until the late 1850s.135 They were frequently
called upon to rebut the charge of ‘hard-heartedness’, which they
usually did by pointing to the scientific status of political economy, a
matter of hard-headedness, and not of the heart, whether hard or
soft.136 Economic laws were ineluctable laws of nature but, as a later
critic put it, all ‘laws of nature are cold, heartless, and cruel, if not
properly bitted and bridled’.137 In the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries the ‘science’ of political economy began to
supersede the earlier moral discourse of what has been called civic
humanism. Though political economy was avowedly descriptive, its
laws, usually characterised as ‘laws of nature’ or ‘natural laws’, had
powerful prescriptive force. Its scientific authority was frequently
augmented by a judicious appeal to the humanistic perspectives of
the earlier tradition, sometimes overtly, but usually covertly, where
terms from the old discourse were surreptitiously imported into the
new. Aimed simultaneously at convincing the intellect and
persuading the will, their combined power was awesome and
seemingly invincible. But, at least in Ireland, morality became a kind
of Trojan horse in the very citadel of political economy. When the
science was under siege during the Famine the authorities felt that it
had to be defended morally as well as intellectually. To give one
small example, in 1848, teachers were asked in an examination to
define ‘interest’ and to ‘prove that it is as reasonable and just to be
required to pay for the loan of money, as for the loan of any thing
else’.138 The term ‘just’, in the context, is obviously a moral one and
the term ‘reasonable’ is fruitfully and obfuscatingly ambiguous,
eliding the difference between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, between description
and prescription, between economics and ethics. As we saw, John
Barrington defined political economy in an ‘extended and useful
sense’ to include morality, the ‘conduct and duty of people to one
another’. By and large, writers saw no real conflict between
economic interests and ethics. The council of the Statistical Society,
for example, referring to James Houghton’s paper on the subject, said
his contention was that ‘free labour is on the whole, and taking long
periods, cheaper than slave, and that, therefore, slavery is not merely
a crime, but an economical blunder’,139 a view developed more
systematically by Cairnes in his celebrated The Slave Power. Within
capitalism the doctrine of the communality of interests was held to
ensure that ethics and economics were in harmony, that the pursuit of
rational self-interest in the market-place not only solved the
economic problem but, in effect, eliminated the moral one.
From the late 1850s there was increasing emphasis on areas where
economics and ethics conflicted and on areas where economic values
were held to be inappropriate. In a number of papers in the second half
of the 1850s Hancock, the most conspicuous defender of rigid
laissez-faire in the previous decade, attacked the workhouses and the
Scottish bothy system for violating ‘family principles’. The
communality of interests notwithstanding, Hancock approvingly
quoted Adam Smith that capitalists had ‘generally an interest to
deceive and even to oppress the public, and accordingly have on
many occasions both deceived and oppressed it’.140 Hancock added
that the ‘care of wealth has now, as ever, a tendency to hardness of
heart, which moral discipline is necessary to control. It has, too, a
tendency to generate strong selfishness and a want of consideration
for others.’ He was anxious to show that ‘social science does not
sanction any law of competition as a substitute for the important
moral duties that devolve on every owner of wealth and every
employer of labour’.141 In another paper he condemned the
‘materialism’ where ‘too little attention is paid to higher views,
which make business subservient to man instead of man to
business’.142 For moral, religious, and ‘family’ reasons Hancock
defended the journeymen bakers of Dublin in their demand for
shorter working hours, despite laissez-faire principles.143 On the
same grounds he vigorously repudiated laissez-faire in the labour
market in relation to the employment of women.144
In a paper ‘On the use and abuse of apprenticeship’, George F.
Shaw declared that
[the] omission of moral considerations, by most of the writers
who have given to political economy its form and impress at
the present day…inspires the bulk of society with a distrust of
its conclusions so remarkably contrasted with the respect
universally tendered to the conclusions of physical science.145
The following year Henry Dix Hutton, a follower of Comte, put
forward what he called the ‘sociological theory’ of property which
recognised not only its legal but also its moral aspect.146 Ingram
claimed that the ‘egotistic spirit’ was, in part, responsible for the
growing distrust of political economy, and in his view that very spirit
was ‘closely connected with vicious method’.147 According to
Bicheno, writing as early as 1830, the ‘cold and frigid philosophy’ of
political economy ill-suited a people governed by their affections,
like the Irish.148 Writing early this century ‘Pat’ (P.D.Kenny), in a
volume aptly entitled Economics for Irishmen, maintained that
defining political economy as a ‘science of wealth’ was inadequate,
so he included an increased ‘human and moral element’ in his
conception of the discipline, which would ‘make the science less
discordant to the Irish national psychology’. He added that
[it] ought to be of interest to Irishmen to know that the
tendency of modern development in economic science is in
what we may call the Irish direction, taking into account factors
of feeling and moral impulse that were comparatively ignored
by the explicit but rigid dogmatism of Stuart Mill and his cocreators of ‘the economic man’,149
Early Irish political economists were frequently called upon to
defend their science against the charge of irreligion. Whately had
accepted the Drummond Chair at Oxford to prevent ‘anti-Christians’
who were ‘striving hard to have the science to themselves’ and he
saw himself as ‘making a sort of continuation of Paley’s “Natural
Theology”, extending to the body-politic some such views as his
respecting the natural’.150 Hearn wrote in 1850 that research into
social science must necessarily lead to the ‘most powerful
confirmation of religious truth’, and it was ‘a merciful arrangement
that our real interest ever coincides with our duty’.151 By 1866
Thomas O’Hagan could claim that the idea that political economy
presented a ‘formidable danger to morals or religion’ had passed
away, for ‘it has been found that the revelation of God is not less
consistent with that law which He has so marvellously established to
make the free volition of His creatures work out unforeseen results,
than with the constitution of His physical universe’.152
There was, however, a widespread feeling that Protestantism was
more in accord with political economy than was Roman Catholicism.
As we have already seen, Newman was harsh in his castigation of
political economy as ‘a science at the same time dangerous and
leading to occasions of sin’, and inflexible in his belief that it should
be strictly subservient to morality and religion. In his entry in
Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy on the ‘Roman Catholic
School’ of political economists, Charles Gide claimed that by the
vehemence of its criticism of the economic organisation of the
day, more particularly by opposing itself to individualism, selfhelp, competition, and the inordinate search for gain, also by
the sombre picture which it paints of the condition of the
working classes, the Roman Catholic school makes common
cause with democratic socialism.153
And, as we noted, Bicheno saw Catholicism as fostering virtues
incompatible with narrow conceptions of political economy. To
Horace Plunkett, Catholicism appeared ‘in some of its tendencies
non-economic, if not actually anti-economic’ because of its reliance
on ‘authority, its repression of individuality, and its complete shifting
of what I may call the moral centre of gravity to a future
existence’.154 One author went so far as to speak of ‘our unconscious
nearness to communism, which did not give way to the
individualistic system of industrial production in Ireland until long
after the change had come about in most other parts of Europe’.155
Though almost all writers denied any kind of denominational
determinism in Irish society, many of them, consciously or
unconsciously, analysed it in terms of the perceived binary
opposition of Catholic and Protestant. In general, Protestantism was
seen as modern, individualist, rational, utilitarian, self-interested,
competitive, libertarian, favouring policies of laissez-faire and free
trade. So, in terms of the rigours of the binary logic, Catholicism was
necessarily traditional, ‘social’, affective, idealist, altruistic, selfabnegating, co-operative, more centralised in structure, more
authoritarian, and more in favour of state intervention in economic
affairs. In a phrase neatly conflating country and religion, W.E.Hearn
wrote in Plutology that there ‘is now little risk, at least in any
Anglican country, that the old extravagances of State action will be
revived’.156 Needless to mention, positive or negative valuations
were placed on these oppositional categories according to taste. By
and large, Catholicism was regarded as a force inimical to political
economy. So an author like Bicheno, writing just two years before
Whately began his great crusade, would have seen the new scientific
discipline as totally unsuited to both Irish and Catholic ‘character’
and ‘nature’, and so ultimately destined to fail.
Predictably enough, stereotypes of Catholic and Protestant were
more-or-less similar to those of the Irish and the English, Celt and
Saxon. John Mitchel had canvassed Berkeley as an exponent of Irish
political economy but the as-yet unregenerate Hancock accused the
author of the Querist of attributing the evils of Ireland to the ‘Celtic
Race’, by claiming that in Ireland ‘industry is most against the natural
grain of the people’, an error which led Berkeley, in Hancock’s view,
to ‘recommend public interference with private enterprise in utter
disregard of the doctrine of laissez-faire’.157 TO take but one other
example, William Monsell wrote that the most popular British
explanation for Irish backwardness was that ‘the Celtic race wants
these qualities necessary to successful industry; that it has flash but
no steadiness; that we have not the depth and perseverance of the
Saxon’.158 This charge Monsell refuted by denying the exclusively
Celtic nature of the Irish and by pointing to other lands where Celts
were economically progressive. But despite numerous ritualistic
denials, the proposition that industry went against the ‘natural grain’
of both Catholics and Irish, remained the suppressed premiss in the
enthymeme of Irish economic argumentation.
Central to the view that both Roman Catholicism and Irishness (an
especially impotent force when combined) made for economic
backwardness was not only their moral antipathy to economic
rationality, but also their perceived opposition to individualism. In
Bicheno’s terminology, a nation and a religion governed by their
affections saw individualism as foreign to them, refusing, for
instance, to see land as merely a commodity and regarding the
landlord-tenant relation as of a ‘social nature’, and not just as a
contract between buyers and sellers. Unfortunately, in Bicheno’s
view, ‘wealth, prosperity, trade, commerce, manufactures’ and their
science, political economy, obliterated the ‘natural affections’,
bringing ‘independence and selfishness’ in their train.159 From the
early 1860s individualism came under increasingly heavy attack. In
1862 Hutton wrote of the ‘inadequacy of the theories of property
currently received’, stating that ‘the fundamental principle’ was that
property was a ‘social institution’. Rejecting, in Comtean terms, the
‘juridical’ and ‘economical’ theories of property, he advocated the
‘sociological theory, which recognised both the legal and the moral
aspects of property. Each of these represented property as ‘social’ in
its origins and in its destination. A just appreciation of the legal
aspect of property tended to ‘correct the common view, not merely
by supplying the social element, but by checking an exaggerated
individualism, which, in our day especially, substitutes a false and
metaphysical unity for the real complication of human affairs’.160
Replying to Hutton, Jonathan Pim expressed his satisfaction that the
‘moral bearing’ of the question had been considered and he saw no
necessary coincidence between a landlord’s interest and his duty. He
believed that the owners of landed property held it in trust for the
community.161 Historical economists, like Leslie, attacked the
centrality of individualism in economic thinking, and Ingram pointed
out that society had ‘passed through states in which the modern
economic constitution was so far from existing, that property did not
belong to the individual but to the community’.162
In 1884, in a work dedicated to Ingram, Posnett wrote of the
necessity of seeing land as a ‘communal possession’, adding that
there was a ‘growing distrust of individualism in ownership—as in
every department of human thought and action—which is bound to
make the “rent” problem of the future a relation between the State
and its members, and no longer a private relation between class and
class’. He saw individualism as ‘approaching the limits of its
disappointing reign; and socialism, in forms of action and thought’ as
‘everywhere in the air’.163 Authors such as Horace Plunkett and ‘Pat’
regretted the economic consequences of the lack of individualism in
the Irish character, but Plunkett hoped that in modern conditions ‘our
preference for thinking and acting in groups’ might not be altogether
a ‘damnosa hereditas’. If, he added, ‘owing to our deficiency in the
individualistic qualities of the English, we cannot at this stage hope
to produce many types of the “economic man” of the economists, we
think we see our way to provide, as a substitute, the economic
association’. These ‘associative’ characteristics happened to have a
‘special value’ in farming, while the largely industrial England did
not possess the associative instincts of the Irish.164
In 1829 Robert Southey wrote that ‘bad as the feudal times were,
they were less injurious than these commercial ones to the kindly and
generous feelings of human nature’.165 Mitchel went so far as to
argue that, in theory, slave social arrangements were morally
superior to those of capitalism. In a letter to the Revd Henry Ward
Beecher in 1854 he wrote that the ‘idea of a slaveholder’s position’
was a ‘true patriarchate’, being the ‘father of a family’. His duties
and responsibilities, as such, were much higher ‘than those of a mere
employer for money wages, between whom and his labourer the sole
nexus is cash payment’.166 And indeed it was in the name of the
family that the great moral critique of individualism was conducted
in Ireland. Its most persuasive exponent was Hancock, once the
leading advocate of unfettered individualism and laissez-faire. In
1859 Hancock read a paper to the Statistical Society with the coattrailing title: ‘The family and not the individual the true unit to be
considered in social questions; with some applications of this theory
to poor laws, the employment of women, and the enlistment of
soldiers.’167 The paper was not published. Beginning in 1855
Hancock had objected to the workhouse as a mode of relief for
widows and orphans on family grounds and, four years later, he
advocated substituting the ‘family system’ for rearing orphans,
instead of the workhouse. In a paper in the same year he condemned
the bothy system of lodging farm labourers in Scotland, because it
violated ‘family principles’.168 In 1860 he opposed the long hours
and Sunday working of journeymen bakers in Dublin as leading to a
‘complete destruction of family life’.169 Later in that year he
addressed the Statistical Society on the violation of ‘family ties’ in
Irish workhouses.170 In a short paper in 1865 he argued that strikes
for shorter hours constituted ‘primarily a moral and social question,
and not an economic one’.171 In castigating those who relied on
‘selfish motives alone as influencing human actions’, Hancock cited
the ‘strength of family affection’ of the Irish people who sent
remittances from America to their families in Ireland. These
economically unmotivated intra-familial transfers deeply moved
Hancock, leading him to attach enormous importance to
cherishing and preserving in the young all the natural family
ties and affections; and to resisting, in every possible form, the
separation and destruction of families,—whether it appears in
Sunday work or night work,—in bothies, or in the workhouse
system as applied to widows and to children.172
It was, however, the issue of the employment of women which
played a central role in Irish opposition to individualism and laissezfaire. In August 1861 the Social Science Congress met in Dublin, and
several important papers were read on the subject of the employment
of women. One result was the foundation of an Irish branch of the
Society for Promoting the Employment of Educated Women.
Another was that women (‘ladies’) were allowed to become associate
members of the Statistical Society. Not unconnected events were the
extention of the objects of the Dublin Statistical Society to ‘all
questions of Social Science’, the change of name to the Statistical
and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, and increased discussion on cooperation as a sort of ‘feminine’ alternative to the manly strife of
competition. The rational, calculating maximiser of utilities of
political economy was clearly male; its homo economicus was
literally that. A woman’s place was in the home, in industrial society
seen as a place of consumption and leisure rather than of production,
while a man’s place was in the public arena. However, for the
efficient working, reproduction, and growth of capitalism, for the
servicing of labour and the investment in human capital, the unpaid
labour of women in the home was vital. The values of individual
greed and selfishness were crucial to success in the market-place, but
a traditional morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice
was demanded of women in the home. The future of capitalism
depended on the unselfishness of parents, especially of mothers, in
relation to their children, an investment in human capital for which
there was little or no economic return. To enable this division of
‘spheres’ (one powerful, the other virtually powerless) on gender
grounds, recourse was had in the nineteenth century to the celebrated
double standard whereby men were regarded as naturally selfish and
women as naturally virtuous. So women needed no economic
inducement to acting morally, for it was ‘natural’ and virtue was,
quite literally, its own reward. They were the guardians of tradition
and of morality, and the transmitters of these values to future
generations. In mid nineteenth-century Britain women were seen as
taking the lead in the moral regeneration of industrial society. But the
tender and altruistic characteristics of women (as of Celts and
Catholics) unfitted them for economically-productive roles in the
market-place, though they also challenged the universality of selfinterest as the necessary and sufficient condition of economic
progress. Home and family, the female space, constituted an oasis of
community in Victorian ideology, providing, at once, a palliating
gloss to and a searing critique of the public male sphere. From the
end of the 1850s women, Catholics, and Celts contributed to what
one might call a ‘feminisation’ of values in Ireland which constituted
a radical questioning of the English, Protestant, and ‘male’ discourse
of political economy.
Early in 1855 Hancock wrote of the ‘spontaneous and universal
recognition of the principle that women ought naturally to be
supported by men’.173 The ‘natural way of rearing children’ was as
‘members of a family, with a mother to cherish and a father to
control’,174 the conventional gender-based division of duties of
female nurturing and male authority. Exactly five years later, in a
paper on the employment of women, Hancock stated that ‘women
are, and must in general be, supported by men, their employment
being absorbed in the domestic work, on which so much of the health,
comfort, and moral well being of society depends’, arguing that the
‘domestic employment of women is a necessary consequence of the
great fundamental law of our nature—the division of mankind into
families’.175 As a direct result of the Social Science Congress
meeting and the foundation of a branch of the Society for Promoting
the Employment of Educated Women, Edward Gibson delivered a
paper on the ‘Employment of women in Ireland’ to the Statistical
Society in December 1861, arguing, dramatically, that the ‘labour
market should be thrown open to all comers’.176 The following year
Arthur Houston, the Whately Professor of Political Economy (1861–
6) published his important Whately lecture The Emancipation of
Woman from Existing Industrial Disabilities: Considered in Its
Economic Aspect, in which he defended the employment of women
on the basis of the principle of ‘Unrestricted Competition’.177 in a
paper read before the Statistical Society in 1866 Houston returned to
the theme, again calling for the ‘unrestrained admission of women to
employments’.178 In both publications Houston vigorously contested
the doctrine of confining women’s ‘proper sphere’ to the home. ‘The
theory’, wrote Houston, ‘of a proper sphere for women cannot be
maintained in principle, and is not maintained in practice’.179 He
alsochallenged the founding assumption of the separation of male
and female spheres, the idea that a ‘true womanly life is lived for
others’, describing it as ‘self-immolation’, a ‘most absurd and
abominable doctrine’.180 Houston, however, did not advocate the
entrance of women into all employments ‘indiscriminately’ for there
were ‘parts of the battle field of life’ for which women were not ‘by
nature fitted’.181 So Houston was advocating the ‘progressive’ case
for the employment of women in terms of what was increasingly
coming to be seen as ‘conservative’ laissez-faire policies. Faced with
this intractable dilemma, Hancock relented on laissez-faire in order
to defend the doctrine of the gender-based separation of public and
private spheres. In reply to Houston’s paper Hancock opposed free
trade in the employment of women on family and moral grounds. He
accused Houston of ignoring the ‘family system, which was the one
which nature pointed out as that upon which society should be
organised’. The basis of that system was that ‘men should provide
support for the women and the children, and the women manage the
domestic economy of the household’. This was a ‘proper and natural
division of labour’.182 Domestic economy was a woman’s proper
study, political economy that of a man. Houston closed the debate by
repudiating any intention of ignoring the ‘family relation’ but hedged
his bets by ‘neither admitting nor denying that the family system
should be made the basis of society’.183
Many commentators made reference to what Hancock called the
‘wonderful and strong family and clan feeling’ of the Irish.184
Plunkett wrote early in this century of the ‘survival in the Celt of the
tribal instincts’.185 Hiscritic, Fr. O’Riordan, condemned the ‘spirit of
industrialism’ which took mothers from their homes and children,
and which ignored ‘any high mutual relation between employer and
employed than that of so much wage for so much work’ and so had
‘naturally ceased to look upon the family as a sacred thing, and the
essential unit of society’.186 He saw agriculture as more conducive to
family life and more ‘natural’ to Irish people and to Catholics, views
endlessly reproduced in manuals of Catholic ‘sociology’ in twentiethcentury Ireland. Citing Marshall that the ‘basis of capital’ was
‘family affection’, ‘Pat’ argued that were it not for the ‘unique
loyalty of the family unit in Ireland, especially among the peasantry,
the economic process must have been degraded among us even more
than it is’. And he saw the survival of nationality as being dependent
on the ‘fine instinct with which the people have always extended the
analogy of the family tie to its national application’.187
In general, there was agreement that ‘family affection’, while it
was to some extent economically enabling, by subverting
individualism, militated against the accumulation of capital. In the
words of A.G.Richey, the accumulation of capital, the ‘essential
condition of a progressive society’, had not occurred in Ireland
because it was a pastoral country and so the ‘ancient system of
society was maintained long after it had ceased to exist in the other
western countries of Europe’. He claimed that no social or political
development was apparent between the fifth and sixteenth centuries
in Ireland. Ireland differed from England in being earlier in the
evolutionary scale and in therefore being closer to her Celtic and
Aryan origins than to English commercial society. Basing his views
on the researches of Sir Henry Maine into primitive communities,
Richey saw early Irish society as ‘a community without a government
or executive; without laws, in the modem sense of the term; in which
the individual had no rights save as a member of a family’, where
private property scarcely existed and where social bonding was
achieved not through law and contract, but through custom. The
family or household, and not the individual, was the basic unit of this
society and the tribe and the nation constituted natural extensions of
the family. The Irish, according to Richey, ‘never advanced beyond
the tribal condition and failed to develop into a nation with a central
government and executive’. Crucially, the trade of this familycentred society was ‘uninfluenced by the laws of political economy’.
And as the individual existed only as a member of a family, property
belonged only to the-collective household.188
Even the ultra-orthodox W.E.Hearn came to accept that a
household-centred society was not only economically inefficient, but
that its existence successfully challenged the universality of the laws
of political economy. The Aryan Household, which Hearn published
in 1878, is the pre-history of modem, economic society which he
dealt with in his earlier Plutology. Central to his analysis was the oftrepeated statement that the ‘unit of modem society is the individual;
the unit of archaic society is the Household’. Aryan society was both
pre-political and pre-economic, it knew no state or law, it lacked the
concepts of the individual and individual freedom, and it operated a
regime of custom rather than of law, of status rather than of contract,
to use Maine’s famous formulation. Paradoxically, it was the coming
into existence of the state that enabled the development of
individualism, so crucial to economic progress. Not only was the
state not inimical to individualism, it was only in a political society
and through the agency of the state that individualism was possible.
And it was in the proportion, too, that a state advanced towards
perfection, that it removed, ‘except so far as its own requirements
and the limiting rights of others demand, all impediments from the
action of the individual. Thus the freedom of individual actions is
found in the State, and is not found elsewhere.’ Similarly, the ‘history
of individual property and the history of personal liberty coincide.
Both of them result from the disintegration of the Household.’ Hearn
argued that Christianity extirpated the Lares, the household gods,
which were central to Aryan society, and that its precepts were alien
to the clan structure. In addition Christianity was a modernising force
in that its ‘whole theory and practice’ implied the ‘recognition of the
individual man, and the value of the single human soul’. Clearly
Hearn had Anglican Christianity in mind rather than Roman
Catholic.189
Hearn’s analysis of archaic society (and Ireland for him was closer
to primitive than to modern society) had profound repercussions for
political economy, especially for the universality of its laws. In an
extraordinary passage in the introduction to The Aryan Household,
Hearn attempted, at once, to deny and confirm the universal
character of economic laws:
Much of the opposition to political economy has been due to
the very natural, or at least very British, desire of some of
its earlier teachers to generalize from British phenomena alone.
This error has been corrected; but it is evident that there are
some societies which the ordinary economic rules do not fit. I
think that the reason is, that the conditions of political society
alone furnish the postulates of political economy. I believe that
political economy is a true science; that is, that its phenomena
may be traced to ultimate laws of human nature. These laws are
at all times the same, but the conditions necessary for their
operation did not exist, or very imperfectly existed, in archaic
society. Political economy requires competition, and is
hopelessly embarrassed by custom. Competition implies free
individual action, and such action is unknown under the clan
regime. The conclusions of political economy are universally
true, but only on the assumption that a certain state of society is
present, and that certain beliefs and motives are absent. What
can political economy do with a Chinaman, who, for the sake
of posthumous worship of himself and his ancestors, is willing
to be hanged for the sum of £33?
In like manner, Hearn argued, the ‘theory of utility would have been
altogether incomprehensible to our archaic forefathers’.190
The assimilationist and utilitarian view was that customary
practices and the family and clan systems were barriers in the way of
individual enterprise, laissez-faire, and economic progress in
general. But others with a comparative and historical perspective
welcomed the challenge to the imperial sway of political economy, to
laissez-faire, to the absolutist doctrine of private property in land, to
the sacredness of contract, and increasingly saw economic virtue in
the notions of communality which were undergoing a rehabilitation.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the profound effect which the
editorial introductions to the first four volumes of The Ancient Laws
and Institutes of Ireland (‘The Brehon Laws’) had on debates about
Irish land. As Clive Dewey puts it in his outstanding article ‘Celtic
Agrarian Legislation and the Celtic Revival’, this reconstruction of
early Irish society popularised the ‘historicist approach to the Irish
agrarian problem’; it was a sharp lesson in ‘historical relativism’,
demonstrating the ‘feasibility, perhaps the desirability of alternative
forms of social organisation to those the utilitarians had taken for
granted’.191 Hancock, who converted to tenant rights in 1865, and
Richey were engaged for a time in editing and translating (however
incompetently) the Brehon Laws, but it was their editorial
introductions which were so vastly influential. In terms of the
currently fashionable evolutionary theory, Ireland was seen as being
at a more rudimentary state of development than England, so laws
appropriate to a ‘commercial society’ were not necessarily
appropriate to Ireland. The family was the unit in early Irish society,
custom rather than contract prevailed, and land was communally
owned. This reconstruction, though highly problematic, gained
virtually unanimous assent, although authorities differed as to
whether it indicated barbarism or civilisation, noble savagery or just
savagery. These ‘Irish ideas’ mounted a powerful challenge against
the most sacred doctrines of political economy: individualism,
contract, and private property in land.
As we saw, Bicheno spoke of Ireland as contradicting the
‘established doctrines of political economy’, although England was
attempting to transplant the science in its inhospitable soil. In his
book States of Mind, Oliver MacDonagh writes of the transfer of
English concepts and presuppositions to Irish affairs after the Act of
Union, especially the ‘gradual transference of the notions of political
economy to the sister island’, despite Irish resistance.192 The
‘English’ ideas of absolute ownership of and free trade in land, and
of the sacredness of contract were not effectively challenged until the
1860s. We saw how in 1848 the young Hancock ridiculed the very
notion of Irish political economy. But after the Famine there was an
increasing awareness that Irish social and economic circumstances
differed so radically from English conditions that ideas valid in
England were not necessarily so in Ireland. According to one author,
the ‘two main pillars of English law’, the ‘absolute rights of property
and the sacredness of contract’ had, on the whole, worked well in
England, whereas in Ireland they had brought ‘unmixed evil’.193
Writing in 1858, Joseph J.Murphy described as an ‘established truth
of political economy, that the interest of the entire community
requires land to become private property, and to be as nearly as
possible assimilated to chattels’ but admitted that such simple truths
appeared not to have been recognised by any primitive people.194 But
four years later Hutton stated as his ‘fundamental principle’ that
property was a ‘social institution’ and quoted Thomas Drummond’s
well-known maxim, interestingly addressed to an Irish landlord, that
‘property has its duties as well as its rights’.195 In a paper in 1870
Hutton wrote of the ‘impossibility, now recognized, of reforming the
relation of landlord and tenant in Ireland by the English system, or
economic laissez-faire’. He suggested instead looking at the ancient
tenures and modern land legislation in British India. He noted that
tribal ownership of land and status tenure were characteristics of
early society in both India and Ireland. It was, stated Hutton,
instructive to observe that the ‘extreme economic notions’ of the
English in India had ‘gradually yielded to an enlightened, just, and
humane regard for native ideas and institutions’.196 Some years
earlier Isaac Butt had opined that the reason why Indian land reform
of the 1860s was the envy of Ireland was because ‘we have a fixation
of an identity with England. The owner of the soil is a “landlord” not
a“zemindar”—the occupier is a “tenant”, not a “ryot”’, and Butt
made it clear that even the simple terms ‘landlord’ and ‘tenant’ had
quite different connotations in England and in Ireland.197 The
previous year an article in the Westminster Review stated that it was
‘perplexing in the extreme’ for English politicians to discover ‘after
years of important legislation, that Indian zemindars were no
landlords, and Indian ryots perversely resisted the process of
transmutation by State alchemy, into English tenants’.198 In his
controversial pamphlet of 1868, Ireland and England, Mill declared
that Ireland should be governed by Irish ideas. India, he wrote, ‘was
now governed with a full perception and recognition of the
differences from England…What had been done for India has now to
be done for Ireland’.199 Indeed it was a book by an Indian civil
servant, George Campbell, which, in large measure, inspired
Gladstone to take such action. The difficulty, said Campbell, arose
from ‘our applying English laws to a country where they are opposed
to facts’ and, echoing Butt, that ‘in Ireland a landlord is not a
landlord and a tenant is not a tenant in the English sense’.200
Mill’s ideas were very much influenced by a remarkable series of
articles, nine in all, written by his friend John Elliot Cairnes, entitled
‘Ireland in Transition’, and published in The Economist in 1865.
Cairnes rejected the English agricultural model as appropriate for
Ireland and he attacked the absolute nature of private property in
land, declaring that land was not to be treated as an ordinary
commodity.201 He found that ‘English theory’ was at variance with
‘Irish ideas’ about landed property and did not explain Irish ‘fact’,
and he rejected what he called the ‘English doctrine’ of ‘open
competition and contract as the remedy for all social disorders arising
from land tenure’. The landlord-tenant contract was not, in Ireland,
an ordinary one, but one which required from the state ‘a large
supervision and control’.202 In a later article Cairnes strongly
supported Campbell’s scheme, as he had taken ‘custom and Irish
ideas as his guide’.203
By the end of the 1860s most commentators on Irish affairs,
especially on land, and those anxious for the pacification of Ireland,
felt, in many cases reluctantly, that the price to be paid was either the
abandonment or the radical redefinition of political economy. The
imperial rule of political economy was over. The O’Donoghue, for
example, asserted in the House of Commons in 1868 that in almost
every instance in Ireland the occupier had ‘ancient prescriptive titles
to their farms, and although this might count for little in the
arithmetic of the political economist, it should be considered by those
who wished to approach the difficulty in a true spirit’.204 And, as we
noted, Richey claimed that in early Irish society trade was carried out
‘uninfluenced by the laws of political economy’. Clearly Ireland,
suspended somewhere between being a colony of England and a
‘sister kingdom’, between being a primitive society and a modern
one, presented extremely complex problems to political economy.
One major result was the methodological revolution in English
economics pioneered by Leslie and Ingram. Perhaps even more
extraordinary was the case of Cairnes, who produced as searching
and comprehensive a critique of orthodoxy, but who remained a
methodological deductivist. In a review of Leslie’s Land Systems and
Industrial Economy of Ireland, England, and Continental Countries,
Mill drew attention to the subversive effects Ireland and its agrarian
problems had on political economy:
The Irish land difficulty having shown, by painful experience,
that there is at least one nation closely connected with our own,
which cannot and will not bear to have its agricultural economy
ruled by the universal maxims which some of our political
economists challenge all mankind to disobey at their peril; it
has begun to dawn upon an increasing number of
understandings, that some of these universal maxims are
perhaps not universal at all, but merely English customs; and a
few have begun to doubt whether, even as such, they have any
claim to the transcendent excellence ascribed to them. The
question has been raised whether the administration of the land
of a country is a subject to which our current maxims of free
trade, free contract, the exclusive power of every one over his
own property, and so forth, are really applicable, or applicable
without very serious limitations; whether private individuals
ought to have the same absolute control, the same jus utendi et
abutendi, over landed property, which it is just and expedient
that they should be permitted to exercise over movable
wealth.205
Mill’s review appeared in 1870, the year of the Irish Land Act which
qualified the absolute control of landlords over their property. The
Encumbered Estates Court set up after the Famine and the 1860 Irish
Land Act both attempted to establish free trade in land. The 1881
Irish Land Act, in effect, accepted the co-ownership of land, replaced
free contract with status tenancy, and gave the state a permanent role
in the fixing of rents. Writing about the 1870 Land Act, ‘A Protestant
Celt’ felt it did not go far enough in the direction of ‘Irish ideas’. It
still represented a form of ‘compulsory Anglification’: an ‘English
statesman now tries to force Irishmen, whether they like it or not, in
the English contract system, and to stamp out all ideas of status
tenancy’.206 The 1881 Act conceded the ‘Three Fs’ (fixity of tenure,
fair rent, freedom of sale), a concession justified by the Bessborough
Commission on the basis of Campbell’s historicist arguments of
1869. This ‘wholesale departure from English norms’, as Dewey
terms it, was defended on the grounds that Ireland had not yet
reached the evolutionary stage of contract tenancy.207 ‘That condition
of society’, according to the Report, ‘in which the land suitable for
tillage can be regarded as a mere commodity, the subject of trade,
and can be let to the highest bidder in an open market, has never,
except under special circumstances, existed in Ireland’. The
‘economical law of supply and demand was but of casual and
exceptional application’ and there had ‘in general survived, despite
the seeming or real veto of the law, in apparent defiance of political
economy, a living tradition of possessory right, such as belonged, in
the more primitive eyes of society, to the status of the man who tilled
the soil’.208 Indeed Gladstone had expressed similar views when he
introduced the 1870 Land Bill. In Ireland, he stated, unlike England
and Scotland,
where the old Irish ideas were never supplanted except by the
rude hand of violence—by laws written on the Statute Book,
but never entering into the heart of the Irish people—the people
have not generally embraced the idea of the occupation of land
by contract; and the old Irish notion that some interest in the
soil adheres to the tenant, even though his contract has expired,
is everywhere rooted in the popular mind.209
In effect, indigenous oral custom, which had entered the heart of the
Irish people, was to be preferred to imposed, written law. More
credence was to be given to the ‘popular mind’ than to the rational
calculus of maximising utilitarians, to national pietas than to
cosmopolitan enlightenment. To give one final example, Posnett
claimed that the economic conditions of Ireland had ‘contributed to
expose the fallacies of Ricardian theory’. The ‘misery of a tenancy
left to the ideal freedom or serfage of Ricardo’ was, in Ireland,
‘exposing the true nature of private monopoly in land’ and the
‘absurd fallacies of free competition and free contract could not live
in the atmosphere of a country in which incumbered landlords and
rackrented tenants-at-will, farming for subsistence, give them the
lie’.210
Needless to mention, ‘Irish ideas’ were frequently condemned for,
in the words of a volume published in 1882 entitled The Irish
Landlord and His Accusers, threatening to ‘unsettle the principles of
Political Economy, to shake the stability of contracts as a law of
civilised society, and to invade the rights of property’. The 1870 Act
had ‘violated the sacredness of contract, and destroyed the security of
property—the two principles which constitute the essential
distinction between a civilised and a savage state of society’.211
Froude had humorously spoken of murder, violence, and destruction
as ‘Irish ideas’ in his English in Ireland; a four-page pamphlet
published in 1878 by ‘An Irish Proprietor’ was entitled Irish Ideas,
one of which was ‘spoliation clap-trap’.212 There was extreme
anxiety in Britain lest ‘Irish ideas’ should migrate to that country,
destroying civilisation as they knew it. But that is another story.
Political economy as a cure-all for Irish ills, as the locus of
ideological consensus in Ireland, and as prime agent of social
control, failed in all of its ambitious objectives. Irish nationalists
were suspicious of an ‘English’ science used to explain away the
Famine, and the people in general were on their guard against
a species of knowledge so enthusiastically embraced by their betters
and so untiringly propagated by them. Roman Catholicism, Irishness,
and engrained familial ideology, all perceived as economically
regressive forces, not only resisted the onslaught of political
economy but forced the establishment into a moral and sociological
critique of its absolutism. In Bicheno’s terms rational political
economy failed to wean the Irish from their affective, non-rational
ways. Contemporary evolutionary views were used to validate the
notion that Ireland was insufficiently developed to come under the
full rigorous sway of political economy. The attempted imposition of
political economy on Ireland for the purpose of assimilating it to
England was no more successful. The decline in prestige of political
economy was concomitant with the increased emphasis on Ireland’s
difference from England. Ireland had to be governed by ‘Irish ideas’.
It was, as it transpired, a short step from historical to ‘national’
economics. In 1905 Arthur Griffith derived the economic ideas of
Sinn Fein from Friedrich List and, most intriguingly, from Henry
Carey (the son of an Irish political exile, Mathew Carey) whose
views, both Leslie and Ingram agreed, were significantly influenced
by a hereditary dislike of England and its political economy. In his
youth Ingram himself wrote a patriotic ballad for the Nation called
‘The memory of the dead’, but which achieved lasting popular fame
as ‘Who fears to speak of ‘98?’ Though Ingram soon abandoned his
incipient nationalism, and even opposed Home Rule, Thomas Kettle
saw a continuity between his patriotic effusion and his political
economy. Kettle, a methodological discipline of Ingram, saw the
‘Historical School’ as ‘under another aspect, the National School’,
and he was the initial holder of the first and only Chair of National
Economics (at University College Dublin) in these islands. He spoke
of the ‘identity of the human reality’ behind Ingram’s poem and his
‘methodological admonition’ of English political economy for, as
always, Ingram voiced the ‘revolt of the small nations against the
Czardom, scientific and political, of the great’.213 In 1916, the year of
the Easter Rising in Dublin, Kettle was killed in action at the Battle of
the Somme, fighting for the freedom of small nations.
APPENDIX
Biographical details of Professors of Political Economy at
Trinity College Dublin and the Queen’s Colleges (Belfast,
Cork, Galway) in the nineteenth century
TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN (1832–1900)
Mountifort Longfield (1802–84) was the son of a clergyman from
County Cork. He was educated at Trinity College, where he
graduated in 1823 as moderator and gold medallist in science. Two
years later he was elected a Fellow of the College, and proceeded to
the degrees of MA in 1829 and LL D in 1831. He was called to the
Irish Bar in 1828, but never practised. In 1832 he was appointed the
first Whately Professor of Political Economy, a position which he
held until 1836. Already by 1834 he had become Regius Professor of
Feudal and English Law in Trinity College, an office he held until his
death. In 1842 he was admitted a Queen’s Counsel. When the
Encumbered Estates Act was passed in 1849 he was appointed one of
the three Commissioners, and he held that office until the Landed
Estates Court was established in 1858. He then became a judge of
that court until 1867. In that year he was sworn into the Irish Privy
Council and left the Landed Estates Court. He became a
Commissioner of National Education in 1853, a Bencher of the
King’s Inn in 1859 and, from 1863 to 1867, he was president of the
Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, having been one of
the original vice-presidents of the Society from its foundation in
1847. His principal publications included: Lectures on Political
Economy, Delivered in Trinity and Michaelmas Terms, 1833
(Dublin, 1834); Four Lectures on Poor Laws, Delivered in Trinity
Term, 1834 (Dublin, 1834); and Three Lectures on Commerce and
One on Absenteeism, Delivered in Michaelmas, 1834, before the
University of Dublin (Dublin, 1835).
Isaac Butt (1813–79), the second holder of the Whately Chair,
was born in County Donegal, on 6 September 1813, the only son of
158 APPENDIX
Revd Robert Butt, rector at Stranorlar, Co. Donegal. He was educated
at the Royal School, Raphoe, and at Trinity College where he took
his BA in 1835, LL B in 1836, and MA and LL D in 1840. In 1833
he was one of the founding members of the Dublin University
Magazine and was its editor from 1834 to 1838. In 1836 he was
appointed, as successor to Longfield, to the Whately Chair of
Political Economy, which he held until 1841. Butt was called to the
Irish Bar in 1838, and in 1844 to the Inner Bar. In 1859 he was called
to the English Bar at the Inner Temple. His high reputation as a
barrister obtained for him a considerable practice, and it was also
instrumental in involving him in active politics from the outset of his
career. In his early political life he was considered one of the most
formidable defenders of the conservative position, actively opposing
O’Connell’s Repeal Association in 1843. In May 1852 Butt entered
Parliament as member for Harwich, but in the same year, in the
course of a general election, he modified his political allegiance and
offered himself as a Liberal-Conservative candidate for Youghal in
County Cork. He was elected and sat from 1852 to 1865. By 1864 he
had returned to Ireland and got involved in the legal defence of
Fenian prisoners, which engaged all his efforts from 1865 to 1869. In
1867 he accepted the presidency of the Amnesty Association. In
1871 the most celebrated part of his political career commenced,
when he was selected to represent the city of Limerick, and to accept
the leadership of the Home Rule Party. It is in this capacity that he is
best remembered in Irish political history. He died in 1879 and is
buried in Stranorlar in Donegal. His publications included:
Introductory Lecture Delivered before the University of Dublin, in
Hilary Term, 1837 (Dublin, 1837); Rent, Profits and Labour: A
Lecture Delivered before the University of Dublin in Michaelmas
Term, 1837 (Dublin, 1838); Protection to Home Industry: Some
Cases of Its Advantages Considered: The Substance of Two Lectures
delivered before the University of Dublin in Michaelmas Term, 1840
(Dublin, 1846); Land Tenure in Ireland: A Plea for the Celtic Race
(Dublin, 1866); The Irish Querist (Dublin, 1867); and The Irish Deep
Sea Fisheries (Dublin, 1874).
James Anthony Lawson (1817–87) succeeded Butt in the
Whately Chair, which he held from 1841 to 1846. A native of
Waterford, where he received his early education, he entered Trinity
College and was elected a scholar in 1836. He obtained a senior
moderatorship in 1837, was a gold medal recipient, and earned a firstclass honours degree in ethics and logic. He graduated with the BA in
APPENDIX 159
1838, LL B in 1841, and LL D in 1850. Lawson went on to pursue a
distinguished legal career, and a considerably more modest political
one. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1840. In 1857 he became a
Queen’s Counsel, and in the same year he made an unsuccessful
attempt to obtain a parliamentary seat as member for Dublin
University. In 1861 he was elected a Bencher of the King’s Inn,
Dublin, and between 1858 and 1859 he acted as legal adviser to the
Crown in Ireland. In 1861 he was appointed Solicitor-General for
Ireland, and in 1865 Attorney-General. Between 1865 and 1868 he
was Member of Parliament for Portarlington, the same seat having
been held between 1819 and 1823 by the distinguished, albeit
absentee, political economist, David Ricardo. In 1868, when his
political career was effectively ended with his defeat in the general
election, he returned to his legal career. In that year he was appointed
fourth Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland, a position he held
until 1882. In 1870 he became an English Privy Counsellor, and in
1882 he was made a judge of the Queen’s Bench division. It was in
this latter capacity that he achieved considerable notoriety in a series
of political trials associated with the Land League agitation. An
attempt to assassinate him in 1882 failed. Lawson was closely
associated with the foundation of the Statistical Society in 1847,
serving as honorary secretary between 1847 and 1851, and as
president between 1870 and 1872. He had the distinction of reading
the first paper to the Society. He was Barrington lecturer in the years
1849, 1850, and 1852. He died in Dublin on 10 August 1887. His
principal publications included: Five Lectures on Political Economy,
Delivered before the University of Dublin, in Michaelmas Term,
1843 (London, 1844).
William Neilson Hancock (1820–88), the fourth holder of the
Whately Chair, was born in Lisburn, County Antrim. He entered
Trinity College in 1838 and was originally a student of mathematics,
turning to law and political economy only after graduation. He was
called to the Irish Bar in 1844. Two years later he was elected
Whately Professor, a position he held until 1851. Hancock, like a
number of Whately Professors, had the distinction of holding two
chairs simultaneously. While still a Whately Professor he was
appointed the first Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy
at Queen’s College Belfast, when it opened in 1849, and he held that
position until 1853. Hancock’s remarkably prolific career was
characterised by a commitment to what he called ‘Applied Political
Economy’. This was reflected in his interest in practical problems,
160 APPENDIX
his contributions to various commissions, and his concern for social
reform based on a careful statistical analysis of the problems at hand.
It was this commitment which led Hancock to establish the Dublin
Statistical Society in 1847 and the Belfast Social Inquiry Society in
1851. Indeed after 1851 his career centred on his role as public
servant and compiler of social and economic statistics. In that same
year, 1851, he was appointed Secretary to the Dublin University
Commission, a position he held simultaneously with the
Professorship in Queen’s College, Belfast, until 1853. In 1854 he
filled the same office for the Endowed Schools (Ireland)
Commission, which reported in 1858. Hancock was Clerk of the
Custody of Papers in matters of Idiots and Lunatics in Court of
Chancery from 1855 to 1858 and again from 1859 to 1866. He was
Secretary of the English and Irish Law and Chancery Commission in
1861, and of the Irish Admiralty Commission in 1864, while in 1867–
8 he was Secretary to the Railways (Ireland) Commission. In 1880 he
was made a Queen’s Counsel and later in 1881–2 became Keeper of
Records of the Irish Land Commission, and Clerk of the Crown and
Hanaper between 1882 and 1884. In addition to these activities he
was an exceptionally prolific writer, producing numerous reports on
different economic and social topics; between 1863 and 1873 he
collected and compiled the ‘Judicial and Criminal Statistics of
Ireland’, and he was by far the most frequent presenter of papers to
the Statistical Society, delivering more than eighty in all between
1847 and 1882. Hancock was the founder of the Dublin Statistical
Society and was its honorary secretary from its foundation in 1847
until 1881, in which year he was persuaded to become president, a
position he held for just one year, but he remained a vice-president
until his death in 1888. Among Hancock’s many publications, the
following represent a limited listing of his more significant
contributions: The Tenant Right of Ulster, Considered
Economically (Dublin, 1845); Three Lectures on the Questions,
Should the Principles of Political Economy be Disregarded at the
Present Crisis? (Dublin, 1847); Introductory Lectures on Political
Economy, Delivered in the Theatre of Trinity College, Dublin, in
Trinity Term, 1848 (Dublin, 1849); Impediments to the Prosperity of
Ireland (London, 1850); Is the Competition between Large and Small
Shops Injurious to the Community? Being a Lecture Delivered in
Trinity College, Dublin, in Trinity Term, 1851 (Dublin, 1851);
Report on the Supposed Progressive Decline of Irish Prosperity
(Dublin, 1863); Report on the State of the Public Accounts between
APPENDIX 161
Great Britain and Ireland (Dublin, 1864); Report on the Landlord
and Tenant Question in Ireland, from 1860 till 1866; With an
Appendix, Containing a Report on the Question from 1835 till 1859
(Dublin, 1866); and The State of Ireland in 1874 (Dublin, 1874).
Richard Hussey Walsh (1825–62), the fifth holder of the Whately
Chair of Political Economy from 1851 to 1856, was born in Kilduff,
King’s County, on 25 July 1825. Having received his early education
by private tuition, he entered Trinity College. He graduated with a
BA in 1847, after a distinguished academic record in science in
which he achieved the highest honours in mathematics and physics.
The following year, 1848, he was awarded the first of Bishop Law’s
Mathematical Prizes. Precluded from pursuing a Fellowship by virtue
of being a Catholic, he turned his attention to the study of political
economy. In 1850 he was awarded the prize in political economy in
the University of Dublin, and as a result was made a Barrington
lecturer. The following year he successfully competed for the
Whately Professorship, and he was also made an honorary secretary
of the Statistical Society, which office he held for six years. In
addition to his duties as Whately Professor, Walsh also acted as
Deputy Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in Queen’s
College Belfast, for Hancock during the winter of 1853. His
academic career effectively ended on completion of his term of office
in the Whately Chair. In 1856 he was appointed Assistant Secretary
of the Endowed Schools (Ireland) Commission. As a result of his
contributions to that Commission he was appointed Superintendant
of the Government Schools of Mauritius in 1857. Walsh’s
commitment to his work attracted the attention of the Governor, who
then appointed him to a Commission to inquire into the
administration of the island. In addition, Walsh was made responsible
for conducting a Census of Mauritius in 1861. He died shortly after
the completion of this work in January, 1862, at the early age of
thirty-seven. Walsh contributed several papers to the statistical
section of the British Association, and to the Statistical Society. He
also wrote frequently for The Economist. His principal area of interest
was monetary economics, and his most important publication, which
was a pioneering study of the subject and was highly regarded by
Senior and Mill, was entitled An Elementary Treatise on Metallic
Currency (Dublin, 1853).
John Elliot Cairnes (1825–75) succeeded Hussey Walsh as the
sixth occupant of the Whately Chair, holding it from 1856 to 1861.
Cairnes was born in Castlebellingham, County Louth, where his
162 APPENDIX
father was a partner in a brewery. After a somewhat indifferent
performance in his early education, Cairnes, against the wishes of his
father, entered Trinity College in 1842. He graduated with a BA in
1848, and received the MA in 1854. After a period of indecision,
Cairnes, having been advised by Professor William Nesbitt of
Queen’s College Galway, turned his attention to political economy,
and was persuaded by Nesbitt to compete for the Whately
Professorship. This he successfully did, in 1856, and held it for the
regulation five years. In 1857 he was called to the Irish Bar, but
never seriously practised; he was for the remainder of his career a
full-time academic economist. In 1859 he was appointed Professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy at Queen’s College Galway,
while still a Whately Professor. In 1860 he married Eliza Alexander,
who was a sister-in-law of his friend Nesbitt. In 1865 he moved to
London and settled at Mill Hill, but retained the Galway
professorship until 1870. Meanwhile, in 1866, he was appointed
Professor of Political Economy at University College London, a
position he held until 1872 when bad health forced him to resign.
Apart from his major contributions to methodology and economic
theory, Cairnes wrote extensively on the Irish land and education
questions. At his death, Cairnes was regarded as one of the most
outstanding economists of his time. His principal publications
included: The Character and Logical Method of Political Economy
(London, 1857; 2nd ed., 1875); The Slave Power; Its Character,
Career, and Probable Designs: Being an Attempt to Explain the Real
Issues Involved in the American Contest (London, 1862); Essays in
Political Economy: Theoretical and Applied (London, 1873); and
Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly Expounded
(London, 1874).
Arthur Houston (1833–1914) was born in Dublin on 10 August
1833, the youngest son of Timothy Turner Houston, a Dublin
merchant. His mother was Mary, the youngest daughter of Henry
Banks, MD. He was educated at Dr Wall’s School in Dublin and D.
Starkpoole’s School in Kingstown. He continued his studies at
Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated as senior moderator in
history, political economy, law, and English literature. He received
the BA degree in 1858 and the LL D in 1865. He was appointed
Whately Professor of Political Economy in 1861, vacating the Chair
in 1866. In 1862 he was called to the Irish Bar. Twenty years later, in
1882, he was made a Queen’s Counsel. He was called to the English
Bar in 1897. He died, in London, on 11 March 1914. His principal
APPENDIX 163
publications included: The Emancipation of Women from Existing
Industrial Disabilities: Considered in Its Economic Aspect (London,
1862); The Principles of Value in Exchange, Explained and
Expressed in Simple and Comprehensive Formulae. Two Lectures
Delivered in the University of Dublin (London, 1866); The Fusion of
Law and Equity (Dublin, 1866); and Daniel O’Connell: His Early
Life, and Journal, 1795 to 1802 (London, 1906).
James W.Slattery (1831–97) was born on 18 August, 1831, the
eldest son of Prince Slattery of Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. He
was educated at Trinity College being elected a scholar in 1859 and
graduating with the BA in 1862. In 1866 he was awarded the MA. He
was first senior moderator in classics, and senior moderator in
history, political science, and English literature. He was elected
Whately Professor of Political Economy in 1866, retaining the Chair
until 1872. He was also Professor of Common Law at the King’s Inn,
Dublin, 1868–70. He was elected to the Council of the Statistical
Society for the twenty-fourth session (1870–1). He was president of
Queen’s College, Cork from 1890 until his death. He was also a
member of the senate of the Royal University of Ireland from 1890 to
1897. He died in Cork on 25 April 1897.
Robert Cather Donnell (1839–83) was born on 25 June 1839, the
second son of William Donnell and Isabella Cather
at Ballinamallard, County Tyrone. He was educated at Queen’s
College Belfast, and was the first gold medallist in jurisprudence and
political economy in the Queen’s University in Ireland. He graduated
in 1860, received the MA in 1863 and the LL D in 1882. He was
called to the Irish Bar in 1864. He was elected to the Statistical
Society in 1860. He was Barrington lecturer for the years 1871,
1872, and 1873. In 1872 he was appointed ninth Whately Professor
of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin, and held the post
until 1877. In 1876 he was appointed Professor of Jurisprudence and
Political Economy at Queen’s College Galway, a position he held
until his death in 1883. His principal publications included: Practical
Guide to the Law of Tenant Compensation and Farm Purchase under
the Irish Land Act (Dublin, 1871); Chapters on the Leaseholder’s
Claim to Tenant-Right, and Other Tenant-Right Questions (Dublin,
1873); A Scheme of Land Transfer for Small Proprietors, by Local
Registry of Title (Dublin, 1874); and Reports of One Hundred and
Ninety Cases in the Irish Land Courts (Dublin, 1876).
James Johnston Shaw (1845–1910) was born at Kirkcubbin,
County Down, on 4 January 1845, the second son of John Maxwell
164 APPENDIX
Shaw and his wife, Anne Johnston. He attended the local national
school and in addition received private lessons from the Revd
J.Towan, the minister of Kirkcubbin. His secondary education was
received at the Belfast Academy which he attended from 1858 to
1861, when he entered Queen’s College Belfast. For his first two
years he studied classics and English literature, and in his third year,
logic and metaphysics. He also studied political economy, but only as
a supplementary subject. He graduated with the BA in October 1865,
taking first place in logic, metaphysics, and political economy. The
following year, 1866, he was awarded his MA in the same subjects.
Uncertain as to what career to pursue, he spent the winter of 1866–7
at Edinburgh University studying theology with a view to taking up a
career in the ministry of the Irish Presbyterian Church. In the event
he did not follow this path and, in June 1869, he was appointed to the
Chair of Metaphysics and Ethics in Magee College, Derry. He became
increasingly unhappy in this position, and in 1876 he successfully
competed for the Whately Chair of Political Economy. He occupied
this position from 1877 to 1882. After his term as Whately Professor,
Shaw’s contributions were mainly to legal and educational matters.
In 1878 he was called to the Bar, and in 1889 he was made a Queen’s
Counsel. In December 1891 he was offered the County Judgeship of
Kerry, which he accepted and retained until 1909. In the educational
sphere he was a senator of the Royal University of Ireland, a
Commissioner of Irish National Education, a member of the
Commission on Manual and Practical Instruction, and a Trustee of
the National Library of Ireland. His most celebrated contribution to
educational affairs was his chairmanship of the Belfast University
Commission of 1908–10, which was concerned with elaborating the
structures of the new Queen’s University Belfast in accordance with
the provisions of the Irish Universities Act of 1908. He was
appointed one of the first Pro-Chancellors of the new university after
its establishment in 1908. He had also been president of the Statistical
Society from 1900 to 1902, and in 1909 he accepted the Recordship
of Belfast. He died on 27 April 1910. The papers which comprise his
principal published work were edited by his daughter Margaret
G.Woods. The volume, Occasional Papers, included a long
biographical introduction by his daughter and was published in
Dublin in 1910.
Charles Francis Bastable (1855–1945) was born in Charleville,
County Cork, the son of a clergyman. His early education was
obtained at Fermoy College. He entered Trinity College in 1873, and
APPENDIX 165
graduated in 1878 with first-class honours in the senior
moderatorship in history and political science, which included some
study of political economy. After graduation he read law and was
called to the Irish Bar in 1881. In 1882 he obtained the degree of MA,
and in 1890 the LL D. In 1882 Bastable was appointed to the
Whately Chair for the statutory five-year period. On completion of
the five-year term, the conditions for holding the Whately Chair were
altered, allowing it to be held for longer periods. Bastable was reelected under the new conditions and retained the chair until his
retirement in 1932, by which time he had spent fifty years as Whately
Professor. During this period Bastable held a number of positions, both
in Trinity itself and in other institutions. In 1883 he was appointed
Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy at Queen’s
College Galway, a position he retained until 1903. In 1902 he was
appointed Professor of Jurisprudence and International Law, and in
1908 Regius Professor of Laws in Trinity College Dublin. He played
an active part in the Statistical Society, of which he was an honorary
secretary from 1886 to 1895, and a vice-president from 1896 to
1915. He was one of the original Fellows of the Royal Economic
Society, and a member of its first council. In 1894 he was elected
president of the British Association, Section F, and in 1921 he was
elected a Fellow of the British Academy. When the Irish Free State
was established in 1921 he served on the Fiscal Inquiry Committee,
which reported in 1923. Bastable retired in 1932 and died thirteen
years later in 1945. Bastable published prolifically over an
exceptionally long career. His principal works included: An
Examination of Some Current Objections to the Study of Political
Economy: Being an Introductory Lecture Delivered in Trinity
College, during Trinity Term, 1884 (Dublin, 1884); The Theory of
International Trade; With Some of Its Applications to Economic
Policy (Dublin, 1887); The Commerce of Nations (London, 1892);
and Public Finance (London, 1892).
THE QUEEN’S COLLEGES (1849–1900)
Queen’s College Belfast
William Neilson Hancock (1820–88), was professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy from 1849 to 1853. For further
biographical details, see entry under Trinity College Dublin.
166 APPENDIX
Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie (1825–82) was born on 21 June
1825 in County Wexford, the second son of Revd Edward Leslie and
Margaret Higginson. He was educated at King William’s College,
Isle of Man, and Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated in 1847
with a gold medal in ethics and logic. In 1851 he took the degree of
LL B. In 1850 he was called to the Irish Bar, and after further legal
studies at Lincoln’s Inn, to the English Bar in 1857. Leslie was
appointed Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy at
Queen’s College Belfast in 1853, a position he retained until his
death on 27 January 1882. Despite the fact that Leslie resided mainly
in London, he was an active member of the Statistical Society
between 1851 and 1863. He was appointed Barrington lecturer in
political economy for 1852 and 1853, and acted as one of the
honorary secretaries of the Society from 1857 to 1863. He read a
number of papers to the Society between 1851 and 1855. He was a
member of both the Political Economy Club and the Athenaeum Club
in London. His principal publications included: The Military Systems
of Europe Economically Considered (Belfast, 1856); Land Systems
and Industrial Economy of England, Ireland and Continental
Countries (London, 1870); and Essays in Political and Moral
Philosophy (Dublin, 1879); the second revised edition of this work
was entitled Essays in Political Economy (Dublin, 1888).
William Graham (1839–1911) was born at Saintfield, Co. Down.
He was educated at the Dundalk Institution, and later at Trinity
College Dublin, where he graduated in 1867 with his BA. In 1870 he
was awarded the MA and was elected scholar in mathematics and
mathematical physics. He was the Wray prizeman in logic, ethics and
metaphysics, and was the vice-chancellor’s prizeman in English
prose. During 1873–4 he was private secretary to Mitchell Henry,
and engaged in literary and private tutorial work in London during
the period 1875–82. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in
1892. He was examiner in political economy and philosophy for the
Indian Civil Service examinations, and was examiner for the Royal
University of Ireland in 1893–4, and again between 1900 and 1909.
He was appointed Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy
at Queen’s College Belfast in 1882 and retained this position until
1909. He died on 19 November 1911. His principal publications
were: Idealism: An Essay (London, 1872); The Creed of Science
(London, 1881); The Social Problem (London, 1886); Socialism, New
and Old (London, 1890); English Political Philosophy from Hobbes
APPENDIX 167
to Maine (London, 1899); and Free Trade and the Empire (London,
1904).
Queen’s College Cork
Richard Horner Mills (1815–93) was born in Dublin in 1815, the
first son of Francis Mills, a merchant, and Anne Horner. He was
educated at Trinity College Dublin where he graduated in 1838 with
the BA. In 1841 he took the MA. He was called to the Irish Bar in
1847. Prior to this he had worked as a merchant. In 1849 he was
appointed the first Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy
at Queen’s College Cork, a position he retained until his death in
London on 24 August 1893. His main publication was The Principles
of Currency and Banking; Being Five Lectures Delivered in Queen’s
College, Cork (London, 1853).
George Joseph Stokes (1859–1935) was born in Sligo on 3 March
1859 and was educated at the Diocesan School, Sligo, Trinity
College Dublin and at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin. He
held the Hibbert travelling scholarship between 1881 and 1883. He
received the MA degree from Trinity College and was called to the Bar
at Lincoln’s Inn. He was for a time a member of the Senate of Dublin
University. He was Professor of Mental and Social Science in
Queen’s College Cork 1894–1909 and Professor of Philosophy from
1909 to 1924. He died on 6 March 1935. His publications, which are
mainly philosophical, include, The Objectivity of Truth (London,
1884); ‘Gnosticism and modern pantheism’, Mind, n.s. 4 (1895); and
‘Logical Theory of the Imagination’, Mind, n.s. 9 (1900).
Queen’s College Galway
Denis Caulfield Heron (1824–81), the first Professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy at Queen’s College Galway,
was born on 16 February 1824 in Dublin, the first son of William
Heron of Newry, Co. Down and Mary Maguire. He was educated at
St Gregory’s, Downside, and in 1840 he attended Trinity College
Dublin, where, in 1843, he qualified for a scholarship, but as a
Catholic was refused election. He graduated in 1845, and in 1857 he
was awarded the LL B and LL D. He was called to the Irish Bar in
1848. In 1849 Heron was appointed to the Chair of Jurisprudence and
Political Economy at the newly-established Queen’s College
Galway, a position he held until 1859. Heron was closely associated
168 APPENDIX
with the Dublin Statistical Society, being one of the original
members. He was also one of the first four Barrington lecturers
appointed in 1849, and was a vice-president from 1871 until his death
in 1881. After he resigned his chair at Queen’s College Galway,
Heron devoted himself to his legal career, with a short interlude in
active politics. He became a Queen’s Counsel in 1860, a Bencher of
King’s Inns in 1872, and third Serjeant-at-law in 1880. Between 1870
and 1874 he was Member of Parliament for County Tipperary,
having narrowly won the seat from Charles Kickham. Heron died
while salmon fishing on Lough Corrib at the age of fifty-seven, on 15
April 1881. His major publications included the following works:
The Constitutional History of the University of Dublin (Dublin,
1847); Three Lectures on the Principles of Taxation, Delivered at
Queen’s College, Galway, in Hilary Term, 1850 (Dublin, 1850);
Should the Tenant of Land Possess the Property on the Improvement
Made by Him? (Dublin, 1852); An Introduction to the History of
Juris-prudence (Dublin, 1860); and The Principles of Jurisprudence,
(Dublin, 1873).
John Elliot Cairnes (1823–75) was Professor of Jurisprudence
and Political Economy at Queen’s College Galway from 1859 until
1870. For further biographical details, see entry under Trinity
College Dublin.
William Lupton (1830–76) succeeded Cairnes at Queen’s College
Galway. He was educated at Queen’s College Belfast, where he
graduated with first-class honours in mathematics in 1852. The
following year he obtained his MA in mathematics and mathematical
physics with first-class honours. He was a member of the Inner
Temple. From 1853 to 1870 he was Registrar of Queen’s College
Galway, and in 1870 he was appointed to the Chair of Jurisprudence
and Political Economy at the same college, a position he held until
1876. He was the author of The Reform Bill and the Queen’s
University in Ireland (Dublin, 1860) and a series of articles,
‘Industrial progress: its causes and conditions’, in Irish Industrial
Magazine (1866).
Robert Cather Donnell (1839–83) was Professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy at Queen’s College Galway
from 1876 until his death in 1883. For further biographical details see
entry under Trinity College Dublin.
Charles Francis Bastable (1855–1945) was Professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy at Queen’s College Galway
APPENDIX 169
from 1883 until 1903. For further biographical details see entry under
Trinity College Dublin.
170
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1
POLITICAL ECONOMY: ‘A SCIENCE
UNKNOWN IN IRELAND’
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
J.K.Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (London, 1977), p. 13.
C.F.Bastable, An Examination of Some Current Objections to the Study
of Political Economy (Dublin, 1884), p. 5.
J.A.Lawson, ‘Address at the opening of the sixteenth session’, Journal of
the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 3 (1861–3), p. 291.
J.Lentaigne, ‘Address at meeting for inauguration of the thirty-first
session’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland,
7 (1876–9), Appendix, p. 4.
J.A.Lawson, ‘Address delivered at the opening of the eleventh session of
the Society’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 2 (1857–60), p. 147, and ‘Address’, Journal of the Statistical
and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 3 (1861–3), p. 285. See also
Report of the council, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry
Society of Ireland, 4 (1864–8), p. 1.
W.N.Hancock, Three Lectures on the Questions: Should the Principles of
Political Economy Be Disregarded at the Present Crisis?… (Dublin,
1847), p. 3.
W.N.Hancock, ‘Obituary notice of the late Most Revd Richard
Whately…’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 4 (1864–8), p. 10.
Sir Robert Kane, ‘Report of the address at the opening of the fifth session
of the Dublin Statistical Society’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical
Society, 2 (1849–51), p. 16.
J.Lentaigne, op. cit., p. 4.
R.H.Mills, The Principles of Currency and Banking (London, 1853).
J.Pim, ‘Address delivered at the opening of the eight session of the
Society’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland,
1 (1855–6), p. 7.
W.J.Fitzpatrick, Memoirs of Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin:
With a Glance at His Contemporaries & Times, 2 vols (London, 1864),
vol. I, p. 189.
172 NOTES AND REFERENCES
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
British Library, Add. MSS 44112, 15 October 1869, quoted in R.D.C.
Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question 1817–1870
(Cambridge, 1960), p. 58.
R.Whately, ‘Report of the address on the conclusion of the first session
Society, 1 (1847–9), pp. 3, 4.
W.J.Fitzpatrick, op. cit., vol. I, p. 182.
E.J.Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately D.D.Late
Archbishop of Dublin, 2 vols (London, 1866), vol. I, p. 142.
R.Whately, op. cit., p. 4.
Sir Robert Kane, op. cit., p. 16.
ibid, p. 284.
W.N.Senior, Journals, Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland , vols
2 (London, 1868), vol. I, p. viii.
T.O’Hagan, ‘Address by the vice-president, …at the opening of the
nineteenth session’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society
of Ireland, 4 (1864–8), p. 230.
Irish Industrial Magazine, 2 (1866), p. 73.
E.J.Whately, op. cit, vol. I, p. 47.
M.Longfield, Four Lectures on Poor Laws (Dublin, 1834), p. 1.
Dublin University Magazine, 4 (1834), p. 33.
I.Butt, An Introductory Lecture Delivered before the University of Dublin
in Hilary Term, 1837 (Dublin, 1837), especially pp. 11, 12.
J.Haughton, ‘The application of machinery to manufactures, beneficial to
the working classes’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 2
(1849–51), p. 3.
J.Mitchel (ed.), Irish Political Economy (Dublin, 1847), p. iv.
Revd G.H.Stoddart, The True Cure for Ireland, the Development of Her
Industries, 2nd edn. (London, 1847), p. 3.
S.Laing, Coercion in Ireland (London, n.d.), p. 5.
An Irish Liberal, Irish Issues (Dublin, 1888), p. 46.
A.S.Greene, Irish Nationality (London, 1911), p. 229.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On the economic views of Bishop Berkeley and Mr Butt,
with respect to the theory that a nation may gain by the compulsory use
of native manufactures’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 1
(1847–9), p. 3.
M.Longfield, ‘Report of the address on the conclusion of the second
session of the Dublin Statistical Society’, Transactions of the Dublin
Statistical Society, 1 (1847–9), p. 5.
J.Pim, op. cit., p. 6.
J.A.Lawson, ‘at the opening of the eleventh session’, Journal of the
Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 2 (1857–60), pp. 151–2.
NOTES AND REFERENCES 173
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
J.J.Murphy, ‘The relation of the state to the railways’, Journal of the
Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 4 (1864–8), p. 307.
Quoted in R.D.C.Black, op. cit., p. 70.
J.E.Cairnes, ‘Political economy and land’, Fortnightly Review,
13 (1870), p. 41.
R.E.Thompson, ‘Prof. Cairnes on political economy’, Penn Monthly,
September 1874, p. 638.
C.F.Bastable, op. cit., pp. 20–5.
Dublin University Magazine, 4 (1834), pp. 33, 42.
R.Whately, op. cit., pp. 3–4.
E.J.Whately, op. cit., vol. I, p. 180.
J.A.Lawson, op. cit., Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society
of Ireland, 3 (1861–3), p. 291.
Fifteenth Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1848), p. 243.
Sixteenth Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1849), p. 137.
(1848), p. 262.
Twentieth Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1853), p. 357.
J.Moylan, ‘On the impolicy of a revival of protection as a remedy for the
present depression’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society
of Ireland, 7 (1876–9), p. 424.
Galway Vindicator, advertisement for lecture series, 23 February 1850.
Galway Vindicator, 27 February 1850.
Galway Mercury, 2 March 1850.
ibid., 30 March 1850.
R.Whately, op. cit., pp. 3,4.
Sir Robert Kane, op. cit., pp. 9–10, 16.
J.Pim, op. cit., pp. 6,7.
J.A.Lawson, ‘Address at the opening of the eleventh session’,
2(1857– 60), p. 147.
J.A.Lawson, ‘Address at the opening of the sixteenth session’,
3(1861– 3), p. 285.
J.A.Lawson, ‘Address at the opening of the eleventh session’,
2(1857– 60), p. 157.
ibid., p. 149.
ibid., p. 152.
ibid., p. 149.
ibid., p. 152.
ibid, pp. 152–3.
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
J.Lentaigne, op. cit., p. 4.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On (i) the value of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”…’,
Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 7
(1876– 9), p. 281.
A.W.Coats, ‘The historist reaction in English political economy
1870– 90’ , Economica, n.s. 21–2 (1954), p. 143.
Quoted by W.S.Jevons in ‘The future of political economy’, Fortnightly
Review, 26 (1876), p. 190.
J.K.Ingram, ‘The present position and prospects of political economy’,
(1876– 9), Appendix, p. 3.
ibid., p. 12.
S.Haughton, ‘Causes of slow progress of political economy’, Journal of
the Statistical and Social Inqfsuiry Society of Ireland, 7 (1876–9), pp.
410–11.
2
THE WHATELY CHAIR OF POLITICAL
ECONOMY AT TRINITY COLLEGE
DUBLIN, 1832–1900
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
N.Atkinson, Irish Education: A History of Educational Institutions
(Dublin, 1969), p. 36.
H.Hutchinson, ‘Essay on Trinity College’ (MS T.5 la.f.2, Manuscript
Room, TCD).
C.Maxwell, A History of Trinity College, Dublin 1591–1892 (Dublin,
1946); H.L.Murphy, A History of Trinity College Dublin from Its
Foundation to 1702 (Dublin, 1951); W.Urwick, The Early History of
Trinity College Dublin 1591–1660 (London, 1892).
Chartae et Statuta Collegii Sacrosanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae
Elizabethae Juxta Dublin (1844), p. 1.
ibid., pp. 307–14.
Quoted in H.L.Murphy, op.cit., p. 60.
W.Urwick, op.cit., pp. 1–23.
N.Atkinson, op. cit., p. 36.
Quoted in Atkinson, ibid.
ibid., p. 37.
H.Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen: Universities in Pre-industrial
Britain (London, 1970), pp. 56–70, 172.
J.Coolahan, Irish Education: History and Structure (Dublin, 1981), p.
112.
R.B.McDowell and D.A.Webb, ‘Trinity College in 1830’, Hermathena,
75 (1950), pp. 1–23.
ibid., p. 5.
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
Chartae et Statuta Collegii Sacrosanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae
ibid., pp. 31–2, 42, 44–50, 180–3, 372–3, 379–81.
See chapter 3.
Registers [Minute Book] of the Board, 1627–1928, vol. 7, Mun v/5, p. 7
(manuscript Room, TCD).
ibid., p. 42.
Dublin University Calendar, 1833 (Dublin, 1833), p. 130.
R.B.McDowell and D.A.Webb, Trinity College, Dublin 1592–1952: An
Academic History (Cambridge, 1982) p. 168.
E.J.Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, D.D.Late
Archbishop of Dublin, new edn (London, 1868), p. 78.
Whately to the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, 30 March 1832, Trinity
College Dublin, Mun/p/1/1745(2) (Manuscript Room, TCD).
Whately to the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, 19 May 1832, Trinity
College Dublin, Mun/p/1/1745(3) (Manuscript Room, TCD).
Whately to the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, n.d. Mun/p/1/1745(6)
(Manuscript Room, TCD).
R.B.McDowell and D.A.Webb, Trinity College, Dublin 1592–1952: An
Academic Historyd (Cambridge, 1982), p. 168.
R.Whately, ‘Report on the address on the conclusion of the first session
Society, I (1847–9.), p. 4.
ibid.
Queen’s College Calendar, 1894–95 (Dublin, 1895).
J.E.Cairnes to William Nesbitt, 18 August 1861, Cairnes Papers,
National Library of Ireland, MS 8941(5).
J.E.Cairnes to William Nesbitt, 22 June 1861, Cairnes Papers, National
Library of Ireland, MS 8941(5).
J.E.Cairnes to Eliza Cairnes, 24 April 1866, Cairnes Papers, National
Library of Ireland, MS 8941(13).
R.Burrowes, Observations on the Course of Science Taught at Present in
Trinity College, Dublin, with Some Improvements Suggested Therein
(Dublin, 1792), pp. 5, 17, 66–7, 67–8, 69.
R.B.McDowell and D.A.Webb, ‘Trinity College in the age of revolution
and reform (1794–1831)’, Hermathena, 72 (1948), p. 5.
I.Butt, Rents, Profits and Labour (Dublin, 1838), p. 7.
R.D.C.Black, ‘Trinity College, Dublin, and the theory of value
1832–1863’ , Economica, n.s. 12 (1945), pp. 140–1.
R.B.McDowell and D.A.Webb, Trinity College, Dublin 1592–1952, An
Academic History (Cambridge, 1982), p. 152.
ibid., p. 173.
Dublin University Calendar, 1839 (Dublin, 1839), pp. 54–5.
ibid., p. 55.
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
. ibid.
Academic History (Cambridge, 1982), p. 230.
ibid., p. 230.
Dublin Univeristy Calendar, 1859 (Dublin, 1859), p. 38.
Dublin University Calendar, 1874 (Dublin, 1874), pp. 279–80.
Academic Historyt (Cambridge, 1982), p. 230.
Dublin University Calendar, 1876, 2 vols (Dublin, 1876), vol. I, p. 56
and vol. II, p. 108.
ibid., p. 65.
ibid., p. 122.
Dublin University Calendar, 1890 (Dublin, 1890), P.62.
ibid., p. 73.
ibid., p. 92.
R.D.C.Black, op. cit., p. 141.
ibid.
J.K.Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (London; 1977) p. 13.
E.R.A.Seligman, ‘On some neglected British economists’, Economic
Journal, 8 (1903), pp. 335–63, 511–35.
J.G.Smith, ‘Some nineteenth-century Irish economists’, Economica, n.s.
2 (1935), pp. 20–32; M.Bowley, Nassau Senior and Classical Economics
(London, 1937); J.Whittaker, History of Economic Ideas (New York,
1940).
ibid.
ibid., p. 141.
M.Bowley, op. cit., pp. 106–7.
L.S.Moss, Mountifort Longfield: Ireland’s First Professor of Political
Economy (Ottawa, Illinois, 1976).
E.R.A.Seligman, op. cit., p. 525.
ibid., p. 147.
R.D.C.Black, ‘Economic studies at Trinity College, Dublin.—I’,
Hermathena, 70 (1947), p. 68.
M.Bowley, op. cit., p. 106.
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
R.D.C.Black, ‘Economic studies at Trinity College, Dublin.—II’,
Hermathena, 71 (1948) p. 52.
T.E.C.Leslie, Essays in Political Economy 2nd edn. (Dublin, 1888), p.
140.
J.Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade (London, 1955).
Also J.W.Angell, The Theory of International Prices: History, Criticism,
and Restatement (Cambridge, Mass., 1926).
Economic Journal, 7 (1897), p. 397.
ibid.
G.A.Duncan, ‘Charles Francis Bastable 1855–1945’, Proceedings of the
British Academy, 21 (1946) p. 3.
ibid., p. 2.
Economic Journal, 13 (1903) p. 226.
ibid., 6 (1896) p. 104.
ibid., 2 (1892) p. 673.
I.Butt, Introductory Lecture Delivered before the University of Dublin, in
Hilary Term, 1837 (Dublin, 1837).
R.D.C.Black, ‘Economic studies at Trinity College, Dublin.—I’,
Hermathena, 70 (1947), p, 70.
ibid., p. 73.
3
POLITICAL ECONOMY AT THE QUEEN’S
COLLEGES IN IRELAND (BELFAST, CORK,
GALWAY), 1845–1900
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Charta et Statuta Collegii Sacrosanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae
T.W.Moody, ‘The Irish university question of the nineteenth century’,
History, 42 (1958), pp. 90–109.
R.O’Connell, ‘The political background to the establishment of
Maynooth College’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 85 (1956), pp. 325–34,
406–15; 86 (1956), pp. 1–16.
T.W.Moody and J.C.Beckett, Queen’s Belfast 1845–1949: The History of
a University, 2 vols (London, 1959), vol. 1, pp, xli–xliv.
ibid., pp. xliv–liii.
See entry for Wyse in Dictionary of National Biography.
T.W.Moody and J.C.Beckett, op.cit., vol. 1, pp. liii–lix.
K.R.Byrne, ‘Mechanics’ Institutes in Ireland before 1855’, unpublished
MEd thesis, University College Cork, 1976.
T.W.Moody, op. cit., p. 95.
Quoted in T.W.Moody and J.C.Beckett, op. cit., vol. 1, p. lxi.
R.B.McDowell, Public Opinion and Government Policy in Ireland,
1800– 46 (London, 1952).
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
T.W.Moody and J.C.Beckett, op. cit, vol. 1, p. 1.
J.C.Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland 1603–1923, 2nd edn.
(London, 1981), pp. 328–31.
J.Healy, Maynooth College: Its Centenary History (Dublin, 1895).
G.Ó Tuathaigh, Ireland before the Famine 1798–1848 (Dublin, 1972),
pp. 107–8.
T.W.Moody and J.C.Beckett, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 8.
G.Ó Tuathaigh, op. cit, p. 107.
Hansard, 3rd series, vol. LXXX, cols 1155–8 (30 May 1845).
J.C.Beckett, op. cit., p. 331.
W.J.Hegarty, ‘The Irish hierarchy and the Queen’s Colleges
(1845–1850)’, Cork University Record, no. 5, 1945, pp. 20–33.
T.W.Moody, op. cit, pp. 98–9
W.K.Sullivan, University Education in Ireland (Dublin, 1866).
Report from the Select Committee on Legal Education, House of
Commons, 1846 (696), p. x.
British Parliamentary Papers, vol. L, 1851, p. 790.
Report of the President of Queen’s College, Belfast for 1856–57, British
Parliamentary Papers, vol. XXI, p. 591.
Report of the President of Queen’s College, Belfast for 1856–57, British
Parliamentary Papers, vol. XXVI, p. 10.
Report of Her Majestry’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the
Progress and Condition of the Queen’s Colleges at Belfast, Cork and
Galway; with Minutes of Evidence, Documents, and Tables and Returns
(1857–8), vol. XXI.
The Queen’s Colleges Commission, 1858, p. 327.
ibid.
ibid., p. 100.
ibid., pp. 325–7.
ibid., p. 326.
ibid.
ibid., pp. 228–29.
ibid., p. 289.
ibid., p. 230.
ibid., p. 290.
Report of the President of Queen’s College, Galway for 1851–52, British
Parliamentary Papers, vol. XLIII, p. 474.
Report of the President of Queen’s College, Cork for 1856–57, British
Parliamentary Papers, vol. XXI, p. 632.
Report of the President of Queen’s College, Galway for 1871–72, British
Parliamentary Papers, vol. XXVI, p. 263.
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
Constitution and Statutes of the Catholic University of Ireland (Dublin,
1869), p. 9.
ibid., p. 10.
J.H.Newman, The Idea of a University (London, 1901), p. 86.
F.McGrath, S.J., Newman’s University: Idea and Reality (London,
1951).
ibid., p. 322.
ibid., p. 356. See also University Gazette, 7 June 1855.
F.H.O’Donnell, ‘On economic science’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record , 11
(1875), pp. 145–56, 252–66, 355–68.
A Memorial Addressed by the Students and Ex-Students of the Catholic
University of Ireland to the Episcopal Board of the University (Dublin,
1873), pp. 16, 24–5.
4
EASY LESSONS ON MONEY MATTERS:
POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE NATIONAL
SCHOOLS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
D.H.Akenson, A Protestant in Purgatory: Richard Whately Archhishop of
Dublin (Hamden, 1981), p. 165.
P.Corsi, ‘Natural theology, the methodology of science and the question
of species in the works of the Reverend Baden Powell’, unpublished
D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1980, part II, chapter VII.
ibid., p. 127.
R.Whately, The Duty of Those Who Disapprove the Education of the Poor
on Grounds of Expediency, as well as of Those Who Approve It, Pointed
out in a Sermon Preached at Halesworth, Oct. 7, 1830: Published by the
Desire of the Subscribers, for the Benefit of the Halesworth and
Chediston National School (London, 1830), p. 17.
P.Corsi, op.cit., p. 129.
Edinburgh Review, 46 (1827) , pp. 38–9. The identity of the author of
this and other articles in the Edinburgh Review is contained in F.W.
Fetter, ‘The authorship of economic articles in the Edinburgh Review,
1802–47’, Joumal of Political Economy, 61 (1953), pp. 232–59.
W. and R.Chambers, Political Economy for Use in Schools and for
Private Instruction (Edinburgh, 1852), p. 54.
Westminster Review, 4 (1825) , p. 89.
T.Chalmers, On Political Economy in Connexion with the Moral State,
and Moral Prospects of Society, in Works (Glasgow, 1832), vol. 19;
R.Whately, op. cit.; R.W.Soloway, Prelates and People: Ecclesiastical
Social Thought in England, 1783–1852 (London, 1969).
This topic has generated an extensive literature. Within sociological
theory the concept was first used and elaborated by E.A.Ross, Social
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order (New York, 1929). It was
further extended in its application by P.A.Lands, Social Control: Social
Organisation and Disorganisation in Process, Rev. edn. (Chicago,
1956). As a concept applied to nineteenth-century popular education, see
J.F.C.Harrison, Learning and Living 1790–1960. A Study in the History of
the English Adult Education Movement (London, 1961). More recent
studies include: A.P.Donajgrodzki (ed.), Social Control in Nineteenth
Century Britain (London, 1977); P.McCann (ed.), Popular Education
and Socialization in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1977). See also
R.Johnson, ‘Educational policy and social control in early Victorian
England’, Past and Present, No. 49, November 1970, pp. 96–119;
F.M.L.Thompson, ‘Social control in Victorian Britain’, Economic
History Review, 2nd series, 34 (1981), pp. 189–208; S.Dentith, ‘Political
economy, fiction and the language of practical ideology in nineteenthcentury England’, Social History, 8 (1983), pp. 183–200. For a similar
analysis of the eighteenth century, see B.Rosen, ‘Education and social
control of the lower classes in England in the second half of the
eighteenth century’, Paedagogica Historica, 14 (1974), pp. 92–105.
B.Simon, Studies in the History of Education 1780–1870 (London,
1960), p. 132.
H.Silver, The Concept of Popular Education(London, 1965), p. 210.
J.F.C.Harrison, op. cit., p. 43.
G.Claeys, The reaction to political radicalism and the popularisation of
political economy in early nineteenth-century Britain—the case of
‘productive and unproductive labour’, in T.Shinn and R.Whitley (eds),
Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularisation (Dordrecht,
1985), p. 119.
C.Gide and C.Rist, History of Economic Doctrines, 2nd edn. (London,
1948), p. 354.
J.Marsh, ‘Economic education in schools in the nineteenth century:
social control’, Economics, 13 (1977), pp. 116–18.
C.Gide and C.Rist, op. cit., p. 355.
For an extended treatment of the contents of school textbooks in the
nineteenth century see R.K.Webb, The British Working Class Reader,
1790–1848 (London, 1955); R.D.Altick, The English Common Reader: A
Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900 (Chicago, 1963);
J.M.Goldstrom, The Social Content of Education 1808–1870: A Study of
the Working Class School Reader in England and Ireland (Shannon,
1972). A succinct overview of this extensive topic is provided in
Goldstrom, ‘Popular political economy for the British working class
reader in the nineteenth century’ in Shinn and Whitley, op. cit., pp.
259– 73.
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20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
The most extended treatment of this topic is contained in the excellent
study by D.H.Akenson, The Irish Education Experiment: The National
System of Education in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1970).
D.H.Akenson, A Protestant in Purgatory Richard Whately Archbishop of
The administrative structure of the system is discussed in detail in
D.H.Akenson, The Irish Education Experiment: The National System of
Education in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1970), pp. 123–56.
E.Larkin, The Quarrel among the Roman Catholic Hierarchy over the
National System of Education in Ireland, 1838–41 (Cambridge, Mass,
1965). For the life and times of MacHale, see B.O’Reilly, John
MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam: His Life, Times and Correspondence, 2
vols (New York, 1890), and N.Costello, John MacHale, Archhishop of
Tuam (Dublin, 1939).
N.Atkinson, Irish Education: A History of Educational Institutions
(Dublin, 1969), chapter II.
D.H.Akenson, A Protestant in Purgatory: Richard Whately Archbishop
of Dublin (Hamden, 1981), p. 167.
ibid., pp. 179–81.
J.Coolahan, Irish Education, History and Structure (Dublin, 1981), p. 17.
ibid., pp. 18–19.
ibid., pp. 15–16.
D.H.Akenson, A Protestant in Purgatory: Richard Whately Archbishop of
Dublin (Hamden, 1981), p. 174. See also W.J. Fitzpatrick, Memoirs of
Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin With a Glance at His
Contemporaries & Times, 2 vols (London, 1864), vol. I, pp. 164–5.
R.Whately, Reply of His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin to the Address
of the Clergy of the Diocese of Dublin and Glendalough on the
Government Plan for National Education in Ireland (London, 1832), pp.
8–10.
ibid., p. 12–29.
N.W.Senior, Journals, Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland, 2
vols (London, 1868), vol. I, p. 67.
Letter from Richard Whately to Mrs Thomas Arnold, 2 January 1846,
reproduced in E.J.Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately,
D.D., late Archbishop of Dublin 2 vols (London, 1866), vol. I, p. 92.
N.W.Senior, op. cit., vol. I, p. 63, and quoted in E.J.Whately, op. cit.,
vol. II, p. 243.
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41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
D.H.Akenson, A Protestant in Purgatory: Richard Whately Archhishop of
ibid, p. 230.
For a succinct account of these developments, see D.H. Akenson, ‘The
Irish textbooks controversy and the gospel of free trade’, Journal of
Educational Administration and History, (1970) 3, pp. 19–23.
R.Whately, ‘Juvenile library’, London Review, 1 (1829), pp. 404–19.
For a detailed history of Whately’s contributions to the textbooks of the
Commissioners of National Education, see Report of the Commissioners
Appointed to Inquire into the Nature and Extent of the Instruction
Afforded by the Several Institutions in Ireland for the Purpose of
Elementary or Primary Education; Also into the Practical Working of the
System of National Education in Ireland [Powis Report] (1870), vol. VII,
pp. 209–10.
For a history of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, see
W.K.L.Clarke, A History of the S.P.C.K. (London, 1959).
J.M.Goldstrom, ‘Richard Whately and political economy in school books,
1833–80’ Irish Historical Studies, 16 (1966), p. 133.
ibid., p. 134.
ibid., p. 100.
E.J.Whately, op. cit., p. 302. See D.H.Akenson, A Protestant in
Purgatory: Richard Whately Archbishop of Dublin (Hamden, 1981), p.
179; J.M.Goldstrom, ‘Richard Whately and political economy in school
books, 1833–80’ Irish Historical Studies, 16 (1966), pp. 135–6.
Saturday Magazine, 3 (1833), p. 182.
Powis Report, vol. VII, p. 39.
Eighteenth Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1851), p. 70.
Thirty-Second Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1865), p. 13.
Education in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1970), p. 229.
ibid., p. 137.
The Newcastle Commission was a Royal Commission established in June
1858 to inquire into the current state of popular education in England and
to consider and report what measures, if any, were required to provide for
the extension of cheap elementary education to all social classes. It was
called the Newcastle Commission after its chairman Henry Pelham, Duke
of Newcastle. It included among its members Nassau Senior, former
pupil and life-long friend of Richard Whately. The Commission sat from
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58
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60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
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77
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79
80
81
82
30 June 1858 to 30 June 1861. It published its report in six volumes in
1861.
R.Whately, Easy Lessons on Money Matters: For the Use of Young
People, 14th edn. (London, 1855), pp. 14–15.
ibid., p. 15.
ibid., p. 18.
ibid., p. 21.
People, 14th Edn. (London, 1855), p. 27.
ibid., p. 27.
ibid., p. 28.
ibid., p. 30.
N.W.Senior, Selected Writings on Economics (New York, 1966);
M.E.A.Bowley, Nassau Senior and Classical Economics (London,
1937). For an overview of classical economics see the excellent volume,
which is a model of balance, lucidity and scholarship, by D.P.O’Brien,
The Classical Economists (Oxford, 1975). For a succinct and perceptive
account of Senior see the entry by Neil de Marchi in The New Palgrave:
A Dictionary of Economics (London, 1987).
A.Marshall, Principles of Economics, 8th edn. (London, 1961), pp.
269– 417.
ibid., pp. 32–3.
D.P.O’Brien, The Classical Economists (Oxford, 1975), p. 106.
S.L.Levy, Nassau Senior 1790–1864 (Newton Abbot, 1970), chapters
VII and VIII.
ibid., p. 35.
ibid., p. 37.
ibid., p. 40.
ibid., pp. 40–2.
ibid., pp. 42–3.
ibid., p. 93.
ibid., pp. 95–6.
ibid., pp. 102–3.
Bowley, op. cit., p. 107. It should be noted that this evaluation differs
from Schumpeters, admittedly somewhat ambiguous, comment that
Whately’s ‘most important service to economics was…that he formed
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89
90
91
92
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94
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97
98
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100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
Senior, whose whole approach betrays Whately’s influence’. See
J.A.Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (London, 1954), p. 484.
Levy, op. cit., pp. 51, 68–74.
Bowley, op. cit., p. 277.
Levy, op. cit., Appendix viii, p. 243.
ibid., p. 74.
See also N.W. Senior, Historical and Philosophical Essays (1841–62), 2
vols (London, 1865). The second volume contains an extremely detailed
analysis, incorporating legal, historical, and economic dimensions, of
trade unions (combinations), which contains supplementary material on
this topic which he submitted to Lord Melbourne.
ibid., p. 280.
N.W. Senior, Historical and Philosophical Essays (1841–62) (London,
1865), vol. II, p. 164.
ibid.
On the general position of the English classical economists with respect
to trade unions, see D.P.O’Brien, op. cit., pp. 284–5 and the references
cited therein.
J.M.Goldstrom, ‘Richard Whately and political economy in school books
People, 14th edn. (London, 1855), p. 103.
ibid., p. 44.
ibid., p. 44.
ibid., p. 45.
Bowley, op. cit., pp. 137–66.
People, 14th edn. (London, 1855), p. 45.
ibid., p. 46.
ibid., p. 45.
ibid, p. 46.
ibid., p. 47.
ibid.
ibid., p. 48.
ibid., p. 49.
ibid.
ibid., pp. 50–1.
ibid., pp. 52–3.
(1851), Appendix, p. 43.
Fourteenth Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1847), p. 488.
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
Report of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland from the
Year 1834 to 1848 (Dublin, 1848), p. 20.
Appendix to Seventh Report of Commissioners of National Education in
Ireland (1840), Appendix, p. 104.
Twenty-Second Report of Commissioners of National Education in
Ireland (1855), Appendix, p. 192.
B.M.Cowie and S.N.Stokes, Report on the Training Institution and
Model School in Marlborough Street (Dublin, 1870), p. 805.
Twenty-Third Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1856), Appendix A, p. 303.
J.A.Dease and W.K.Sullivan, Report on Agricultural Schools (Dublin,
1870), p. 864.
Appendix to Dr Kirkpatrick’s Report, Twentieth Report
of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland (1853), p. 357.
(1853), Appendix, p. 137.
E.Butler, Twentieth Report of Commissioners of National Education in
Ireland (1853), pp. 137, 152.
Powis Report (1870), vol. VII, p. 172.
ibid, vol. VIII, p. 30.
ibid, (1870), vol. VIII, p. 61.
ibid, (1870), vol. VIII, p. 75.
ibid, (1870), vol. I, pt. ii, p. 617.
ibid. See also, for example, Seventh Report of Commissioners of National
Education in Ireland (1840), p. 104 and Twentieth Report of
Commissioners of National Education in Ireland (1853), p. 160.
See, for example, Twenty-Second Report of Commissioners of National
Education in Ireland (1855), p. 106. There were six head inspectors and
they were usually chosen from the ranks of district inspectors, who were
approximately forty in number.
(1848), p. 228.
ibid.
ibid., p. 243.
ibid., pp. 250.
(1849), p. 137. These were the results of the oral examination for males.
Seventeenth Report of Commissioners of National Education in Inland
(1850), pp. 47–8.
ibid., p. 48; Nineteenth Report of Commissioners of National Education
in Ireland (1852), p. 317; Twentieth Report of Commissioners of
National Education in Ireland (1853), p. 199; Twenty-Second Report of
Commissioners of National Education in Ireland (1855), p. 15.
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
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155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
Seventeenth Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1850), pp. 34–5.
ibid., p. 34; Eighteenth Report of Commissioners of National Education
in Ireland (1851), p. 330; Nineteenth Report of Commissioners of
National Education in Ireland (1852), p. 303.
(1851), p. 328; Nineteenth Report of Commissioners of National
Education in Ireland (1852), pp. 301, 315.
(1851), pp. 58–9.
ibid., p. 118.
ibid., p. 128.
ibid., p. 142.
ibid., pp. 53–4.
ibid., p. 66.
ibid., pp. 84–5.
Powis Report (1870), vol. VII, pp. 539, 545.
(1851), p. 114.
ibid.
(1848), p. 319.
(1850), p. 66.
(1848), p. 267.
(1856), p. 74.
Ireland (1855), p. 138.
N.W.Senior, Journals, Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland, 2
vols (London, 1868), vol. I, p. 33.
(1848), p. 290.
(1853), p. 205.
(1848), p. 299.
ibid., p. 290.
ibid., p. 303.
ibid., p. 305.
ibid.
(1849), p. 222.
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164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
(1848), p. 165.
ibid., p. 311.
(1849), p. 176.
Nineteenth Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1852), p. 332.
ibid., p. 335.
(1848), p. 305.
ibid, p. 314.
(1849), p. 180.
(1848), p. 316.
ibid., p. 291.
(1856), p. 71.
(1848), p. 289.
5
‘TO THE POOR THE GOSPEL IS
PREACHED’: THE DUBLIN STATISTICAL
SOCIETY AND THE BARRINGTON
LECTURES
1
2
3
4
R.D.C.Black, The Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland:
Centenary Volume 1847–1947 (Dublin, 1947), p. 16.
Report of the council, read at the opening of the sixth session,
Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 3 (1851–4), p. 8. For
information regarding amount of bequest, see Report of the council,
Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland , 8(1879–
85), p. 153. This sum generated an income for the trust of approximately
£120 per annum. See also, S.Shannon Millin, The Statistical and Social
Inquiry Society of Ireland: Historical Memoirs (Dublin, 1920), p. 43.
Between 1834 and 1849 the Barrington Fund, in James A. Lawson’s
words, seems to have ‘lain dormant in consequence of the difficulty of
finding persons who would administer a trust of the kind which involved
very considerable care and judgement’ (‘Address at the opening of the
eleventh session’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 2 (1857–60), p. 148).
Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 3 (1851–4), pp. 8–9.
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
ibid., p. 9.
ibid., p. 132.
Society of Inland, 4 (1864–8), p. 157.
ibid.
Society of Ireland, 5 (1868–70), pp. 240–1.
Society of Ireland, 6 (1871–6), pp. 279–80. Under this new system
payment was partly by salary and partly by results. (Report of the
council, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 7
(1876–9), p. 28).
According to Lord O’Hagan, in January 1874 this committee was formed
‘to establish classes for the systematic teaching of Political Economy,—
chiefly to young men engaged in mercantile pursuits’. The committee
was composed of the chief magistrate of Belfast and many of the city’s
‘leading merchants and professional men, and several eminent professors
of the Queen’s College’. The ‘highly informed economist’ they were
‘fortunate in obtaining the services of was Revd Samuel Prenter. Of the
fifty-five students, three were alumni of the Queen’s College, seven were
solicitor apprentices, and forty-five were ‘engaged in commercial
business’. The average attendance at classes was between forty and fifty.
The experiment was, in O’Hagan’s view, ‘very satisfactory’ and he
remarked that Dublin had followed Belfast’s example with the formation
of a class of ‘young mercantile men’, presumably the Mercantile Clerks’
Association (Occasional Papers and Addresses (London, 1884), p. 112).
Report of the council, read at the conclusion of the second session,
Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 1 (1847–9), p. 22.
ibid.
According to the council (Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry
Society of Ireland, 1 (1855–6), p. 5), the management of the Barrington
lectures was usually entrusted to the Corresponding Societies. There were
mechanics’ institutes also in Armagh, Belfast, Cork, Galway, Limerick,
and Newry, and it is possible that they were involved in organising the
Barrington lectures which were given on several occasions at these
places. See list of mechanics’ institutes in K.R.Byrne, ‘Mechanics’
Institutes in Ireland before 1855’, M.Ed. thesis, National University of
Ireland (University College Cork), 1976, p. 3. Byrne lists twenty-two
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
institutes, but there were at least four more: Downpatrick, Lurgan, Navan,
and Portaferry.
Report of the council, read at the conclusion of the third session,
Report of the council, read at the opening of the fifth session,
ibid.
ibid.
Report of the council, read at the opening of the seventh session,
ibid., p. 152.
ibid., p. 249.
ibid., p. 370.
ibid., pp. 432–3.
ibid., pp. 240–1.
ibid., pp. 279–80.
ibid., p. 366.
Society of Ireland, 10 (1894–9), p. vi.
ibid., p. vii.
ibid., p. 128.
Society of Ireland, 13 (1912–19), p. 607. This statement obviously
derives from Lawson. See note 3 above.
Report of the council…sixth session, Transactions of the Dublin
Statistical Society 3 (1851–4), p. 9. According to Hancock, John
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
Barrington ‘had long felt the disastrous results arising from ignorance of
political economy amongst the working classes in Ireland’ (‘Obituary
notice of the late Most Revd Richard Whately’, Journal of the Statistical
and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 4 (1864–8), p. 10). A series of
lectures given by C.H.Oldham (Barrington Lecturer, 1895–1901) in
Dublin was advertised as being of ‘special interest to the workers of the
city, their families and friends’ (card advertising Barrington Lectures,
National Library of Ireland, Shelf Number LO P 115, 59).
For example, Report of the council, Journal of the Statistical and Social
Inquiry Society of Ireland, 4 (1864–8), p. 249 and Journal of the
Society of Inland, 4 (1864–8), p. 370.
Byrne, op. cit., p. 2.
Sir Robert Kane, ‘Report of the address at the opening of the fifth
session’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 2 (1849–51), p.
10.
T.E.C.Leslie, ‘An inquiry into the progress and present conditions of
Mechanics’ Institutions’, part I, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical
Society, 3 (1851–4), p. 4.
ibid.
T.E.C.Leslie, ‘An inquiry into the progress and conditions of Mechanics’
and Literary Institutions’, part. II, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical
Society, 3 (1851–4), p. 4.
ibid., pp. 6–7.
ibid, 6.
ibid., p. 8.
ibid.
ibid.
ibid.
ibid.
ibid.
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
ibid., p. 249.
ibid., p. 369.
National Library of Ireland, Shelf Number LO P 115, 59.
T.A.Larcom, ‘Address on the conclusion of the third session’,
J.Pim, ‘Address at the opening of the eighth session’, Journal of the
Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 1 (1855–6), pp. 7–8.
Lawson, ‘Address at the opening of the eleventh session’, Journal of the
Statistical and Social Inquity Society of Ireland, 2 (1857–60), p. 148.
W.N.Hancock, op. cit., p. 10.
T.O’ Hagan, op. cit., p. 112 and W.H.Dodd, ‘Introductory address’,
(1894– 9), p. 128.
6
‘NEXT TO GODLINESS’: POLITICAL
ECONOMY, IRELAND, AND IDEOLOGY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
J.E.Bicheno, Ireland and Its Economy (London, 1830), pp. 223–4.
A.J.Taylor, Laissez-Faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-Century
Britain (London, 1972), p. 23.
S.Smith, The Works (London, 1869), p. 355.
ibid.
J.E.Bicheno, op. cit., pp. 224, 225, 226.
ibid., pp. 275, 289, 266, 300, 301.
J.H.Newman, ‘The Tamworth Reading Room’, Discussions and
arguments on various subjects, 4th ed. (London, 1885), p. 292.
J.H.Newman, The Idea of a University (London, 1901), p. 86.
J.H.Newman, ‘The Tamworth Reading Room’, op. cit., p. 293.
W.O’Brien, Irish Ideas (London, 1893), p. 22.
‘Educational Police’, United Irishman, 8 April 1848, p. 138.
‘Combinations of Workmen’, United Irishman, 18 March 1848, p. 88.
Third Report of the Commissioners of National Education in
Ireland (1836), p. 95.
ibid., p. 18.
Fifth Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland (1838),
p. 134.
(1849), Appendix, p. 128.
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
Eighteenth Report of’ Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1851), p. 55.
ibid., pp. 238–9.
(1853), p. 113.
Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Nature and
Extent of the Instruction Afforded by the Several Institutions in Ireland for
the Purpose of Elementary or Primary Education; Also into the Practical
Working of the System of National Education in Ireland [Powis Report]
(1870), vol. II, p. 211, Report of Assistant Commissioner
D.C.Richmond, Belfast District.
(1849), p. 129.
Reports of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland for the
Years 1834 to 1848, Inclusive (Dublin, 1848), p. 29.
Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to
Inquire into the Practical Working of the System of National Education in
Ireland; Together with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix, (1854), part
I, (525) xv, part I, 285.
Powis Report (1870), vol. I, part I, p. 350.
ibid.
Collected Works of pádraig H. Pearse: Political Writings and Speeches
(Dublin, n.d.), p. 32.
Powis Report (1870), vol. I, part I, p. 351.
Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to
Inquire into the Practical Working of the System of National Education in
Ireland: Together with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix (1854),
part I, p. 456.
Ireland (1855), pp. 73, 76.
Second Book of Lessons: For the Use of Schools (Dublin, 1847), p. 135.
A Catholic Layman U.W. Kavanagh], Mixed Education: The Catholic
Case Stated (Dublin, 1859), pp. 39–40.
R.Whately, Speech of the Most Reverend His Grace the Archbishop of
Dublin, on Presentation of Petitions Respecting Education (Ireland), in
the House of Lords, on Tuesday, March 19th, 1833 (London, 1833), p. 3,
and E.J.Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, D.D.Late
Archbishop of Dublin, 2 vols (London, 1866), vol. I, p. 378.
A.Webb, A Compendium of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1878).
ibid., vol. II, p. 246.
Register of the Board, Trinity College Dublin, 24 October 1835, p. 109
(Manuscript Room, TCD).
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
(1850), Appendix, pp. 108, 109.
Powis Report (1870), vol. III, p. 377.
ibid., vol. III, pp. 592, 378.
ibid., vol. III, p. 377.
ibid., vol. III, pp. 376, 378.
Third Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland (1836),
p. 96.
Letter of Cullen to Dr Bernard Smith, 8 March 1852, in Peadar Mac
Suibhne, Paul Cullen and His Contemporaries with Their Letters from
1820–1902, 3 vols (Naas, 1965), vol. III, p. 113.
E.Hayes, The Ballads of Ireland, 2 vols (London, 1855), vol., I, pp.
xxii– xxiii.
Quoted in J.Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society 1849–1918 (Dublin,
1973), p. 141.
P.J.Keenan, Twenty-Second Report of Commissioners of National
Education in Ireland (1855), p. 73.
ibid., p. 74.
ibid., pp. 75, 76.
R.Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, 7th edn. (London, 1870), p. 170.
W.J.Fitzpatrick, Memoirs of Richard Whately, Archhishop of Dublin:
With a Glance at His Contemporaries & Times, 2 vols (London, 1864),
vol. I, pp. 53, 221, 244, 243.
R.Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, 7th edn. (London, 1870), p. 234.
W.J.Fitzpatrick, op. cit., vol. II, p. 68 and vol. I, p. 220.
e.g. W.H.Newell, Twentieth Report of Commissioners of National
Education in Ireland (1853), Appendix, p. 162 and J.W.Kavanagh,
(1848), p. 250.
J.E.Bicheno, op. cit., p. 173.
W.J.Fitzpatrick, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 229, 54–5.
W.O’Brien, op. cit., p. 22.
The Poems of Samuel Ferguson, ed. Padraic Colum (Dublin, 1963), p.
99.
Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State of
Popular Education in England (1861), p. 127. Quoted in J.M.
Goldstrom, ‘Richard Whately and political economy in school books,
1833–80’, Irish Historical Studies, 16 (1966), p. 131.
Saturday Magazine, 3 (1833), p. 182.
W.J.Fitzpatrick, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 67–8.
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
Society, I (1847–9), pp. 5, 7.
Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Select Committee of the House of
Lords on the Plan of Education in Ireland (1837), vol. VIII, part II,
Appendix I, p. 1408. Hamill’s report, from the province of Munster, was
dated 10 January 1833.
J.Patten, Fifteenth Report of Commissioners of National Education in
Ireland (1848), p. 262.
Seventh Report of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
(1840), p. 104.
W.McCreedy, Fifteenth Report of Commissioners of National Education
in Ireland (1848), pp. 242–3.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On the economic views of Bishop Berkeley and Mr Butt,
with respect to the theory that a nation may gain by the compulsory use
of native manufacturcs’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, I
(1847–9), p. 3.
Statistical Society, I (1847–9), p. 4.
J.Pim, ‘Address delivered at the opening of the eight session of the
Society’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland,
I (1855–6), p. 6.
Society, I (1847–9), p. 4.
Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, I
(1855– 6), p. 4.
M.Longfield, ‘Address delivered at the opening of the ninth session of
Ireland, 1 (1855–6), p. 153.
Ireland, 2 (1857–60), pp. 152, 159–60.
T.O’Hagan, ‘Address by the vice-president…at the opening of the
nineteenth session’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society
of Inland, 4 (1864–8), p. 232.
Sir Robert Kane, ‘Address by the vice-president…at the opening of the
twentieth session’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 4 (1864–8), pp. 355–6.
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
J.Pim, ‘Address at the opening of the thirtieth session’, Journal of the
A.Houston, The Emancipation of Women from Existing Industrial
Disabilities: Considered in Its Economic Aspect (London, 1862), p. 6.
J.A.Lawson, ‘On the connexion between statistics and political
economy’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 1 (1847–9), p.
6.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On the use of the doctrine of laissez faire, in
investigating the economic resources of Ireland’, Transactions of the
Dublin Statistical Society, 1 (1847–9), p. 9.
T.E.C.Leslie, ‘The self-dependence of the working classes under the law
of competition’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 2
(1849–51), p. 4.
W.E.Hearn, Plutology (Melbourne, 1863), p. 338.
J.E.Cairnes, ‘Political economy and laissez-faire’, Fortnightly Review,
n.s. 10 (1871), p. 80.
W.E.Hearn, The Aryan Household (Melbourne, 1878), p. 10.
J.E.Bicheno, op. cit., pp. viii–ix.
Revd J.Godkin, The Rights of Ireland (Dublin, 1845), p. 56.
H.Martineau, Letters from Ireland (London, 1852), p. 66.
Revd F.F.Trench, Observations on the System of the Church Education
Society (As Applicable to Ireland) (Dublin, 1852), p. 27.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On the use of doctrine of laissez faire, in investigating
the economic resources of Ireland’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical
Society, 1 (1847–9), p. 3.
W.E.Hearn, The Cassell Prize Essay on the Condition of Ireland
(London, 1851), pp. 4–5.
H.M.Posnett, The Ricardian Theory of Rent (London, 1884), p. 84.
Chapman to Cairnes, 23 May 1860, Cairnes Papers, National Library of
Ireland, MS 8944 (6).
H.L.Jephson, ‘Irish statute law reform’, Journal of the Statistical and
Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 7 (1876–9), pp. 376–7, 385.
T.E.C.Leslie, ‘An inquiry into the progress and present condition of
Mechanics’ Institutions’, pt. I, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical
Society, 3 (1851–4), p. 6.
Society, 2 (1849–51), pp. 4, 15–16.
Ireland, 4 (1864–8), p. 235.
T.O’Hagan, ‘Address at the opening meeting of the twenty-fourth
session’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland,
5 (1868–70), p. 221.
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
H.L.Jephson, op. cit., p. 382.
Proceedings, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 5 (1868–70), p. 106.
See note 88 above.
Quoted in T.E.C.Leslie, Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy
(Dublin, 1879), p. 148.
Hansard, 3rd series, vol. CXC, col. 1525 (16 March 1868).
Revd G.H.Stoddart, The True Cure for Ireland, the Development of Her
Industries, 2nd edn. (London, 1847), p. 17.
Hansard, 3rd series, vol. CCLX, cols 890–926 (7 April 1881).
Quoted in E.D.Steele, Irish Land and British Politics (Cambridge, 1974),
p. 306.
J.K.Ingram, ‘The present position and prospects of political economy’,
(1876–9), Appendix, p. 15.
G.M.Koot,
English
Historical
Economics
187O-1926
(Cambridge, 1987), p. 32.
I.Butt, A Voice for Ireland (Dublin, 1847), p. 4.
investigating the economic resources of Ireland’, Transactions of the
Dublin Statistical Society, 1 (1847–9), p. 4.
E.Lysaght, ‘A consideration of the theory, that the backward state of
agriculture in Ireland is a consequence of the excessive competition for
land’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 2 (1849–51), pp. 5,
6–7.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On strikes with respect to hours of labour’, Journal of
J.A.Lawson, ‘Address at the opening of the twenty-fifth session’, Journal
of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 6 (1871–6), p. 58.
H.D.Hutton, ‘Tenures and land legislation in British India’, Journal of
J.K.Ingram, op. cit., p. 25.
J.E Cairnes, op. cit., pp. 85, 86.
S.Haughton, ‘Causes of slow progress of political economy’, Journal of
Ireland, 2 (1857–60), p. 144.
J.A.Lawson, ‘On the connexion between statistics and political
economy’, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 1 (1847–8).
ibid., p. 179.
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
Report of the council at the opening of the sixteenth session, Journal of
J.A.Lawson, ‘Address’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry
Report of the council, Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society, 2
(1849–51), p. 18.
Statistical Society, 1 (1847–9), p. 5.
Society, 2 (1849–51), pp. 4, 9. See also Sir Robert Kane, ‘Address by the
vice-president…at the opening of the twentieth session’, Journal of the
W.N.Hancock, ‘On (1) the value of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of
Nations”…’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 7 (1876–9), p. 283.
S.Haughton, op. cit., p. 412.
M.Longfield, Four Lectures on Poor Laws (Dublin, 1834), p. 2.
S.Haughton, op. cit., p. 411.
(1848), p. 316.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On the bothy system…’, Journal of the Statistical
ibid. and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 2 (1857–60), p. 381.
W.N.Hancock, ‘A consideration of the discoveries of gold and silver…’,
(1861– 3), p. 82.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On the long hours of employment of journeymen bakers
in Dublin’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 2 (1857–60), pp. 399–405.
W.N.Hancock, ‘The effects of the employment of women…’, Journal of
the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 2 (1857–60), pp.
439–45, and Discussion, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry
G.F.Shaw, ‘On the use and abuse of apprenticeship’, Journal of the
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
H.D.Hutton, ‘The land question viewed as a sociological problem…’,
Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 3 (1861–3),
p. 296.
‘Pat’ [P.D.Kenny], Economics for Irishmen, 4th edn. (Dublin, 1907), pp.
12–13.
E.J.Whately, op. cit. vol. I, p. 67.
W.E.Hearn, ‘On the coincidence of individual and general interests’,
Galway Vindicator, 6 March 1850.
Ireland, 4 (1864–8), p. 233.
R.H.I.Palgrave, Dictionary of Political Economy (London, 1894).
Sir Horace Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century (Dublin, 1983), p. 102.
First published 1904.
‘Pat’ [P.D. Kenny], op. cit., pp. 75–6.
W.E.Hearn, Plutology, (Melbourne, 1863), p. 442.
investigating the economic resources of Ireland’, Transactions of
the Dublin Statistical Society, 1 (1847–9), p. 16.
W.Monsell, ‘Address at the opening of the twenty-second session’,
(1894– 70), p. 59.
(1861– 3), pp. 295, 296, 297.
Discussion, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 3 (1861–3), p. 316.
J.K.Ingram, op. cit., pp. 18–19.
H.M.Posnett, op. cit., pp. 85, 91.
Sir Horace Plunkett, op. cit., pp. 166, 167.
Quoted in R.Williams, Culture and Society 178O-1950 (Harmondsworth,
1963), p. 42.
Letter of 23 January 1854 to The Citizen, reprinted Galway Vindicator,
18 February 1854.
Proceedings, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 2 (1857–60), p. 396.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On the bothy system’, Journal of the Statistical and
Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 2 (1857–60), p. 375.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On the long hours of employment of journeymen bakers
in Dublin’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 2 (1857–60), p. 400.
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
W.N.Hancock, ‘The Aberdeen industrial schools contrasted with Irish
workhouses: family ties being cherished in the schools, and violated in
the workhouses’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 3 (1861–3), pp. 6–19.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On strikes with respect to hours of labour’, Journal of
W.N.Hancock, ‘The Aberdeen industrial schools contrasted with Irish
workhouses: family ties being cherished in the schools, and violated in
the workhouses’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 3 (1861–3), p. 19.
W.N.Hancock, ‘The workhouse as a mode of relief for widows and
orphans’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland,
1 (1855–6), p. 85.
ibid., p. 86.
W.N.Hancock, ‘The effects of employment of women’, Journal of the
E.Gibson, ‘Employment of women in Ireland’, Journal of the Statistical
and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 3 (1861–3), p. 142.
A.Houston, The Emancipation of Women from Existing Industrial
Disabilities: Considered in its Economic Aspect (London, 1862), p. 5.
A.Houston, ‘The extension of the field for the employment of women’,
(1864– 8), p. 345.
ibid., p. 346.
A.Houston, The Emancipatian of Women from Existing Industrial
Disabilities: Considered in its Economic Aspect (London, 1862), pp. 10,
11.
A.Houston, ‘The extension of the field for the employment of women’,
Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 4 (1864–
8), p. 351; and The Emancipation of Women from Existing Industrial
Disabilities: Considered in its Economic Aspect (London, 1862), p. 13.
W.N.Hancock, Discussion, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry
A.Houston, ibid., p. 353.
W.N.Hancock, ‘On the remittances from North America by Irish
emigrants…’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland, 6 (1871–6), p. 287.
Sir Horace Plunkett, op. cit., p. 167.
Revd M.O’Riordan, Catholicity and Progress in Ireland (London, 1905),
p. 93.
‘Pat’ [P.D.Kenny], op. cit., pp. 13, 14.
A.G.Richey, A Short History of the Irish People (Dublin, 1887), pp. 14,
15, 13, 35, 54, 35, 58–9.
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
W.E.Hearn, The Aryan Household, (Melbourne, 1878) pp. 453, 455, 465,
474.
ibid., pp. 10–11.
C.Dewey, ‘Celtic agrarian legislation and the Celtic revival: historicist
implications of Gladstone’s Irish and Scottish land acts 1870–1886’, Past
and Present, 64, August 1974, pp. 45, 46.
O.MacDonagh, States of Mind (London, 1983), p. 35.
S.Laing, Coercion in Ireland (London, n.d.), p. 5.
J.J.Murphy, ‘On the tenures and taxation of India’, Journal of the
Statistical and Sodal Inquiry Society of Inland, 2 (1857–60), p. 214.
(1861– 3), p. 295.
H.D.Hutton, ‘Tenures and land legislation in British India’, Journal of
the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 5 (1868–70), pp. 152,
153, 158.
I.Butt, The Irish People and the Irish Land (Dublin, 1867), pp. 267–8.
‘Tenant-right in Ireland’, Westminster Review, n.s. 30 (1866), p. 1.
J.S.Mill, Ireland and England (London, 1868). Reprinted in Collected
Works (Toronto, 1982), vol. II, pp. 507–32. Quotation is from p. 519.
G.Campbell, The Irish Land Act (London, 1869), pp. 4, 6.
J.E.Cairnes, ‘Ireland in transition’, The Economist, 21 October 1865, p.
1269.
ibid., 14 October 1865, p. 1238.
J.E.Cairnes, ‘Political economy and land’, Fortnightly Review, n.s. 7
(1870), p. 59.
Hansard, 3rd series, vol. CXC, cols 1617–18 (13 March 1868). Quoted in
Steele, op. cit., p. 20,
J.S.Mill, ‘Professor Leslie on the land question’. Fortnightly Review, n.s.
7 (1870), p. 642.
A Protestant Celt [Robert Macdonnell], Irish Nationality in 1870, 2nd
ednedn edn. (Dublin, 1870), pp. 26, 43.
C.Dewey, op. cit., p. 62.
ibid.
ibid., p. 59.
H.M.Posnett, op. cit., pp. 47–8.
Political Economy, The Irish Landlord and His Accusers (London,
1882), p. 2.
An Irish Proprietor, Irish Ideas (n.p., [1878]), p. 1.
T.M.Kettle, The Day’s Burden (Dublin, 1937), p. 138.
INDEX
academies 46–9
Act of Union of Ireland with Great
Britain (1801) 20–2
Albert National Agricultural Training
Institution 88
Althusser, L. 117
Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland
150, 150
Anglican Church 18–21, 42–5, 64,
70– 4, 125, 149;
Church Education Society 71, 89
Arnold, M. 114
Aryan Household, the (Hearn) 149–4
Ashley, W.J. 34
assimilation, Whately and 120–5,
124– 9
Atkinson, N. 18
Bicheno, J.E. 111, 114–19, 116, 124,
130–5, 140, 141, 143, 150
‘Black 47’ 30, 130
Black, R.D.C. 28, 36, 38
Blake, A.R. 76, 117–2, 123
Board of National Education 3, 64,
76, 90–9
Book of Lessons series 76, 77
bothy lodging system 144
Bowley, M. 38, 83
‘Brehon Laws, the’ 150, 150
Bright, J. 5
British Association for the
Advancement of Science 15, 135,
136–1, 161, 165
Broderick, G.C. 33
Brooke, W. 122–7
Burrowes, Revd R. 4, 26–8
Burton J.H. 55, 61
Busteed, T. 99
Butler, E. 90, 92
Butt, I. 6, 24, 27–9, 29, 35, 37, 40;
biographical details 157
Bagehot, W. 33, 34
Barrington, J. 3, 10, 137, 139;
the Barrington lectures 11–12, 13,
96–15, 158, 160, 167;
Trust fund 10, 96
Bastable, C.F. x, 10, 30, 33–5, 38,
39– 2, 63;
biographical details 164–70, 168
Bastiat, C.F. 30, 61
Belfast: Belfast Academical
Institution 44–7;
Queen’s College 49, 51–4, 55–59,
62, 159, 163, 165, 168
Beresford, Archbishop 71
Cairnes, J.E. 9, 24, 25–7, 31, 32, 33,
34, 38, 38, 41, 61, 63, 97, 99, 107,
130, 135, 136, 139, 151, 152;
Campbell, G. 151
Campbell, J.H.M. 99
Carey, H. 155
Catholics, the see Roman Catholicism
201
202 INDEX
‘Celtic Agrarian legislation and the
celtic revival’ (Dewey) 150
Central Model Schools 88
Central Training Institution 88
Chalmers, T. 30, 66
Chapman, J. 132
Character and Logical Method of
Political Economy (Cairnes) 41
charity 24, 93–7, 126;
board of charitable bequests 48
Chevalier, M. 33
Christian Brothers, the 122–7, 124
Church Education Society 71, 89
Church of Ireland 20–2;
Young Men’s Christian
Association 98, 100
civic humanism 138
Clare, G. 34
class system in Ireland vi, 10–11, 16,
18–21, 46, 81, 85, 124–33, 143–8;
and the Barrington lectures 96–15,
see also national schools
Coats, A.W. 15
Cobden, R. 33
Coercion in Ireland (Laing) 7–8
Colleges (Ireland) Act (1845) 49, 50
colonial attitudes vi, 16, 77, 117,
124–9, 132–7, 151–8
Combination Laws, repeal of (1824)
84
combinations see trade unions
Compendium of Irish Biography
(Webb) 121
continental authors 34, 35
Conversations on Political Economy
(Mrs Marcet) 67
Cork, Queen's College 4, 5, 48–1,
59–3, 162, 166–2
corn dealers and the Corn Laws 95,
113
corresponding societies 100
Cossa, L. 34
cost-of-production theory of value 36,
38, 95
Courtney, L. 24–6
Coyne, W.P. 62
Cullen, Cardinal P. 123
Daily Lesson Book, III 77
Darwin, C. 67
Davis, T. iv
De Laveleye, E. 33
denominational divisions vi, 1, 20–3,
114–19, 124–9, 128–3, 141–7;
and higher education 42–64
Dewey, C. 150
Dictionary of Political Economy
(Palgrave) 141
Dillon, W. 63
disestablishment 20
Dismal Science, the (Dillon) 63
dissenters, Protestant see
Presbyterians
distribution theory 37, 38–38
division of labour 65
Dockrill, J. 32
Dodd, W.H. 111
Donnell, R.C. 26, 33, 41, 98, 99;
Downing, D.P. 88
Drummond Professorship of political
economy, Oxford vi, 3, 27, 39, 68,
141
Dublin Mechanics' Institute 102
Dublin Statistical Society, the vi, 1–14
passim, 24, 96, 126, 128, 136–1,
139, 144–9, 147, 156–72 passim;
and the Barrington lectures 96–15,
see also Statistical and Social
Inquiry Society of Ireland
Dublin University Calendar 22–4, 62
Dublin University Magazine, 10, 157
Edgeworth, F.Y. 39–40
evolutionary theory 67, 150
family-centred society 144–9, 148–3
famine, Irish see Great Famine
INDEX 203
Fawcett, H. 61
Ferguson, S. 125
Finlay, T.A. 62
First Lessons in Political Economy for
the Use of Elementary Schools
(MacVickar) 67
French Revolution 43, 68–2
Froude, J.A. 154
Gaelic League, the 1
Galbraith, J.K. x, 36
Galton, F. 15
Galway Mercury 12
Galway, Queen’s College 12, 25, 48–1,
59–3, 97, 98, 99, 161, 164, 167–3
Galway Vindicator 12
Gide, C. 141
Gladstone, W.E. 134, 153–9
Godkin, Revd J. 131
Goldstrom, J.M. 77, 79
Goschen, G.J. 33, 34, 61
Grace, J.A. 122–7
Graham, W., biographical details 166
Great Famine (1847) vi, 7, 8–9, 30,
53, 71, 95, 113, 130, 134, 135, 139,
153, 154
Greene, A.S. 8
Griffith, A. 155
Hamill, H. iv, 126–1
Hancock, W.N. 2–3, 4, 8, 14, 24, 30,
33, 37, 38–38, 41, 55, 63, 98, 107,
110, 114, 128, 130, 131, 135, 138,
139, 144–9, 147, 150–5, 165;
biographical details 158–5
Harrison, F. 33, 67
Haughton, J. 6–7
Haughton, S. 15, 136, 138
Hearn, W.E. 2, 12, 99, 111, 114, 130,
131, 141, 142, 149–4
‘hedge schoolmasters’ 119
Heron, D.C. 12, 60, 61, 99
Higgs, H. 40
History of Adult Education (Hudson)
106
household-centred society 144–9,
148–3
Houston, A. 6, 25, 38, 41, 97, 129,
147;
Hudson, J.W. 106
Hullah’s music system 120, 123
Huskisson, W. 61
Hutton, H.D. 107, 135–40, 140, 143,
150–6
Idea of a University, the (Newman)
62
ideology of political economy vi, 1, 2,
64–96, 111–60;
and methodology 40–3, 114–19;
and the national schools 64–96
India, British 151;
civil service examinations 35
Industrial Resources of Ireland
(Kane) 110
Ingram, J.K. x, 15, 30–2, 41, 98, 103,
114, 134–9, 136, 140, 155
intermediate education system 120
Introductory Lectures on Political
Economy (Whately) see Easy
Lessons on Money Matters
Ireland and England (Mill) 151
‘Ireland in Transition’ (Cairnes) 151
Irish Agricultural Organisation
Society 1
Irish Confederation 7
Irish Fourth Book of Lessons 77
Irish Ideas 154
Irish Industrial Magazine 6
Irish Landlord and his Accusers, the
154
Irish language, the 1, 121, 124
Irish nationalism 22, 120–5
Irish Political Economy (Irish
Confederation) 7
Irish Querist, the (Butt) 142, 157
204 INDEX
Irish Tenant League 135
Jephson, H.L. 132–7
Jevons, W.S. 34, 36
Journal (Statistical Society) 8
‘Juvenile Library’;
(Whately) 75
Kane, Sir R. 4, 5, 11, 13, 110, 129,
133, 137–2
Kavanagh, J.W. 90
Keenan, P.J. 120, 123–8
Kenny, P.D. 140
Kettle, T. 155
Keynes, J.N. 41
labour theory of value 36, 80–4, 92–6,
95–9
Laing, S. 7–8
laissez-faire doctrine vi, 7, 8, 113,
119, 129, 135–40, 139, 142, 147,
150, 151
land question, the vi, 9, 41, 113, 134,
150, 153–9;
Irish Land Acts (1870, 1881) 136,
153
Land Systems and Industrial Economy
of Ireland, England and
Continental Countries (Leslie) 152
Larcom Sir T. 110
Larne Model Agricultural National
School 88
Lawson, J.A. 2, 4, 5–6, 8–9, 10, 13–14,
29, 30, 37, 40, 99, 102, 110,
128, 130, 135, 136;
Lectures on Political Economy, Five
(Lawson) 37, 40, 158
Lectures on Political Economy
(Longfield) 37, 38, 59
Lectures on Poor Laws, Four
(Longfield) 6, 10, 156
Lectures (Whately) 55
Lentaigne, Sir J. 3, 4, 14
Leslie, T.E.C. x, 2–3, 33, 38–1, 41,
55–59, 99, 102, 106, 114, 130, 133,
135;
Limerick Declaration (1868) 9
List of Absentees of Ireland, A (Prior)
26
literary societies 46, 99–4
Lloyd, B. 27, 28
London Review 75
Longfield, M. 6, 8, 9, 22, 24, 29–1,
37, 38, 41, 61, 97, 128, 137;
Lowe, R. 134
Lupton, W., biographical details 168
Lysaght, E. 135
McCreedy, W. 10–11, 90, 91, 119,
127
McCulloch J.R. 30, 61, 65–9, 67
MacDonagh, O. 150
Macdonnell, J. 11, 88
McDonnell, R. 30
McDowell, R.B. 27, 31
MacHale, Dr. J. see Tuam,
Archbishop of
MacVickar, J. 67
Madden, S. 3–4, 26
Malthus, T.R. 89
Marshall, A. 34
Martineau, H. 67, 131
Maynooth College 21, 44, 48, 62,
68–2;
Maynooth Act (1845) 48
mechanics’ institutes 46, 99–4, 102,
103, 106, 123
Memoirs (Madden) 26
Menger, C. 36
methodology 40–3, 114–19
Mill J.S. 30, 32, 33, 34, 61, 67, 113,
134, 151, 152–8
‘Mill-Bastable condition’ 39
Millin, S.S. 105
Mills, R.H. 5, 33, 59–2, 61
INDEX 205
Mitchel, J. 2–3, 7, 142, 144
model schools 88, 92, 105
moderatorships, Whately Chair
28–29, 32–6
Moffett, T.W. 12, 99, 102, 103, 114
Monroe, J. 24, 97, 99, 103, 105–10,
109
Monsell, W. 142
Morier, R.B.D. 33
Moylan, J. 11, 15, 101
Munster college movement 46–9
Murphy, J.J. 9, 150
Murray, Archbishop D. 72–6
music in the national schools 118–4,
123–8
mutual improvement societies 100
National Association for the
Promotion of Social Science 109,
137
national schools, political economy in
the vi, 3–4, 10, 13, 14, 46, 49,
64– 96, 117;
commissioners and the Board 3,
64, 76, 90–9, 120, 156, 164;
inspectors 10–11, 90–4, 118–3;
teachers 3, 88–8, 117–31
National University of Ireland 63
nationalism see Irish nationalism
Nesbitt, W. 131–6
Newell, W.H. 118–3
Newman, J.H. iv, 51, 62, 116
Nicholson, J.S. 34
non-subscribing Presbyterians 45, 50
Northcote, S.H. 33
Oath of Supremacy, Anglican 43
O’Brien, W. 117, 125
O’Brien, W.S. 46
Observations on the Course of
Science…. (Burrowes) 26
O’Connell, D. 21, 42, 50
O’Donnell, F.H. 63
O’Hagan, J. 62, 63
O’Hagan, Lord T. 6, 111, 129, 133,.
141
Oldham, C.H. 98, 99, 104, 109
O’Reilly, M. 119
Origin of Species (Darwin) 67
O’Riordan, Fr. 148
Patten, J. 90, 127
Pearse, P. 123
Peel, Sir R. 42, 45, 47, 116–1
philosophical societies 99–4
Phipps, Dr R. 121
Pim, J. 5, 10, 13, 110, 128, 129, 143
Plunkett, H. 141, 147–2
Plutology (Hearn) 142, 149
Political and Social Economy
(Burton) 55
political economy vi–vi;
‘a science unknown in Ireland’
x–15;
at the Queen’s Colleges 12–13,
21, 24–7, 42–64, 117;
the Dublin Statistical Society and
the Barrington Lectures 96–15;
Ireland, and ideology vi, 1, 2,
64– 96, 111–60;
in the national schools vi, 3–4, 10,
13, 14, 46, 49, 64–96, 117;
professors of 156–73;
the Whately chair of 16–41
Political Economy Class Committee
of Belfast 98
Political Economy Club, London 15
Political Economy (senior) 55
poor laws 30
popular criticism of political economy
6–7, 12
Porter, A.M. 30, 97, 99, 103
Posnett, H.M. 131, 143–8, 154
Prenter, Revd S. 98
Presbyterians 21, 44–7, 49, 51–4, 70,
71–5, 115, 141;
Dublin Association 100;
206 INDEX
orthodox and non-subscribing 45,
50
Price, L.L. 40, 61
pricing theory 37
Principles of Currency and Banking,
the (Mills) 5
Principles of Values in Exchange, the
(Houston) 6
Prior, T. 3–4, 26
professors of political economy x,
156–73;
at the Queen’s Colleges 4, 5, 12,
24, 26, 55–59;
holders of the Whately Chair 1–2,
6, 12, 16–41, 156–70,
see also Barrington Lectures
property, security of vi, 7, 93–7, 127,
140, 143, 148, 150, 151, 153–9
proselytisation 69, 73, 121
protection 38–1
Protestant dissenters see
Presbyterians;
voluntary education societies
Protestant Society Schools 71, 115
Public Finance (Bastable) 40
Queen’s Colleges in Ireland 12–13,
21, 24–7, 42–64, 117;
Belfast 49, 51–4, 55–59, 62, 159,
163, 165;
Cork 4, 5, 48–1, 162, 166–2;
courses and reading lists 60–3;
Galway 12, 25, 48–1, 59–3, 97,
98, 99, 161, 164, 167–3;
professors of political economy
165–3;
Queen’s Colleges Act (1845) 52;
structure of teaching in the 52–61
Queen’s University 42, 48, 49–2, 163,
164
Rae, J. 34
religious division see denominational
divisions
Rhetoric (Whately) 124
Ricardo, D. 29–1, 32, 33, 38, 61, 79
Richey, A.G. 148, 150, 152
Rintoul, J. 88
Roman Catholicism 20–3, 43–51, 64,
68–3, 114–19, 123–9, 141–7, 148,
155;
Catholic Relief Act (1793) 20–2,
43;
the Catholic University 21, 51, 62,
117;
and the national schools 68–4;
and the Queen’s Colleges 43–51
Rossil, M.P. 30
Royal Commission Reports 84, 122,
126
Royal Dublin Society 101
Saturday Magazine 76
school textbooks, national 73–80
schoolmasters, national school 3,
88–8, 117–31;
Barrington lecturers 101
scientific societies 46, 99–4
Scope and Method of Political
Economy, the (Keynes) 41
Senior, N. 6, 29, 32, 36, 55, 61, 73,
80, 83–7, 121
Shaw, G.F. 140
Shaw, J.J. 26;
Sinn Fein 155
Slattery, J.W., biographical details
162
Slave Power, the (Cairnes) 139
Smith, A. 7, 15, 29, 30, 33, 55, 61, 89,
138
Smith, S. 114
social control vi, 1, 66, 69
social divisions see class system;
denominational divisions;
division of labour
INDEX 207
Social Inquiry Society of Ireland see
Statistical and Social Inquiry
Society of Ireland
social science 14, 97–2, 109, 137–4;
Social Science Congress 109, 145,
146
socialism 144
societies, literary, scientific and
philosophical 99–4
Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge 75
Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge 75–9
Society for Promoting the
Employment of Educated Women
145, 146
sociology 138, 148
Southey, R. 144
Spencer, Lord 133–8
States of Mind (MacDonagh) 150
Statistical and Social Inquiry Society
of Ireland vi, 96, 136–1, 145
Statistical Society, the Dublin see
Dublin Statistical Society;
Statistical and Social Inquiry
Society of Ireland
Stoddart, Revd G.H. 7
Stokes, G.J. biographical details 167
Sullivan, R.J. 88
Taylor, A.J. 113
teachers, national school 3, 88–8,
117–31;
Barrington lecturers 101
textbooks, national school vi, 73–80,
119–4
Theory of International Trade
(Bastable) 39–2, 165
Thompson, R.E. 9
Thornton, W.T. 33
Three Lectures on the Questions:
Should the Principles of Political
Economy Be Disregarded at the
Present Crisis?…(Hancock) 8
Thünen, J.H.von 38
Thurles, National Synod of (1850) 62
Tomlinson, T. 84
Toole, Canon 119–4
Toynbee, A. 34
Trade Institute of Berlin 58
trade unions 82–8, 94, 96, 108;
repeal of the Combination Laws
(1824) 84
Transactions (Statistical Society) 8
Trench, Revd F.F 131
Trinity College, Dublin vi, 5, 16–41,
46, 81, 96, 97, 121, 166;
history of 16–22, 42–5;
the Whately Chair of political
economy 3, 22–41, 156–70
Tuam, Archbishop of 48, 51, 69, 71
Ulster 21, 44–7
union with Great Britain 20–2, 132
United Irishman 117, 118
United Irishmen movement 21
United Relief Association 7
University College Dublin 99, 155
University of Dublin see Trinity
College, Dublin
utility theory of value 37–9, 38, 149–4
value theories 36–9, 38, 79–3, 92–6,
95–9, 119–4
voluntary education societies,
Protestant 69
wages and profits, theory of 38
Walker, F.A. 34
Walsh, R.H. 37–9, 99;
wealth, distribution of 81–5
Wealth of Nations (Smith) 15, 55, 89,
138
Webb, D.A. 27, 31
Westminster Review 66, 132, 151
208 INDEX
Whately, Archbishop Richard iv, vi–vi,
1–5, 6, 13, 23–5, 29–1, 36–8,
55, 62, 116, 120–5, 124–32;
Drummond Chair, Oxford vi, 3,
27, 39, 68, 141;
Easy Lessons on Money Matters
64–96,
see also Whately chair of political
economy
Whately chair of political economy 4,
9–10, 16–41, 96, 110–15;
Cobden prize 34;
courses 28–29;
establishing the 22–8;
holders of the 156–70;
moderatorships 28–29, 32;
recommended reading lists 29–5;
regulations governing the 22–4,
27–9;
Whately memorial prize 32,
see also Barrington Lectures
Whately, E.J. 23
women, employment of 140, 144–51
working men’s clubs 100, 105
Wyse, T. 45–8
Young Ireland movement 50, 123,
126

Political Economy and Colonial Ireland: The Propagation and

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